Martyrdom is an Art
by creatoriginsane
Summary: "He thought he would break her, but he was the one who broke in the end." The killer and the artist from beginning to end. DISCONTINUED. See "The Killer and the Artist"
1. the dead remain dead

**Martyrdom is an Art**

A/N: Revisions galore.

* * *

 _"He thought he would break her, but he was the one who broke in the end."_

 _Akasuna no Sasori wanted to achieve immortality, not godhood._

* * *

At twenty-nine years old, she is the mother of sixteen children.

Armed thieves find all of them in an underground room, huddled together in the cold.

The blades, they think, are too reminiscent of their mother.

Steel encased in skin. The swords are wrapped in leather like a gift, each with its own name, its own story. One is unlike the other. They wonder how she has chosen the names of each blade, how each story came together, and how each one is related to the other.

She has named her children after the gods, and each kill will be a prayer sent to the heavens.

Yamenokaya and Kunishige, her siblings, they have found missing from her collection.

* * *

/

* * *

At thirty-five years old, he is the father of a hundred and more.

Scouts find his body buried under rubble, under stone, and they are terrified.

He is not human, not entirely, as are the rest of the bodies they find in the cavern. With skin that does not bleed, and eyes that do not rot, they find themselves in the midst of a carnival of souls. It is cold. It is quiet. They are terrified.

And when they leave, one of them could have sworn that they heard him laughing, along with the rest.

He, the grand puppeteer, with all his finest creations had put on a spectacle of death.

Pity that they missed the show.

* * *

/

* * *

The scouts and the thieves meet at a crossroads. It was late and the afternoon, and both parties were equally terrified of what they saw earlier that day; the scouts with a mass grave of human puppets, the thieves with an underground chamber of whispering secrets and soul-infused sword. They've both had similar experiences with caverns filled with not-enitrely-human remains.

The scout sees that the thieves have brought a coffin.

The thief sees that the scouts have brought the same.

Suspicions arise and each takes offense at the other. A fight ensues and blood is shed, in the middle of it all, a coffin opens and a body falls.

It is his.

His unblinking eyes stare at her steel children, unmarred by age, and unsoiled by the dirt of their grave.

The thieves and the scouts continue their battle, and amidst the trees, a voice is heard and a gasp resounds.

"Where could you be all this time?"

They are still alive; she, the human weapon, and he, the living puppet.

* * *

A/N: Enjoy


	2. children play with childish things

**Martyrdom is an Art**

A/N: Revisions galore.

* * *

 _"He thought he would break her, but he was the one who broke in the end."_

 _Akasuna no Sasori wanted to achieve immortality, not godhood._

* * *

She is six years old when she is on her tenth kill.

But the world is unfair and she is a cheater. Her victims are tied to wooden posts with sacks over their heads and a disease flowing through their veins. They are sick. The experiment has failed. They have to die.

Hagakure is a city of silence and honor, discipline and death. There is no crime because no one hears of it; the underground tunnels and chambers of the city are home to the best mercenaries, the best assassins, the best murderers.

Lately, the daimyo discovers a necessity for combatting biological warfare, a need to develop anti-venoms and pills that enhance the body's durability against acid and the like. It all sounds fantastical, if not impossible. The daimyo is powerful, but imperfect, and the amount of people dying is testament to it.

Three weeks and twenty-three people are confirmed dead, fourteen dying from poison and drug overdose (one can faintly hear the daimyo exclaim in wonder, "How ironic!"), and fifty-five awaiting their chance at grasping life by its very ends.

"Kill them." A voice from outside tells her, "Else they will kill the entire village."

She draws her sword, too big and too heavy for her hands, and strikes each of them twice, a slice in the neck, a stab in the chest, just like what her mother taught her. They won't survive. They shouldn't. That's why they were brought here, in an underground chamber smelling of dried blood and old bones.

Tomorrow, they will be burned, their ashes will be poured into the river that cuts across the city, and life will go on as it always has. It has to.

"They are expendable. All people are. We are only as useful as swords before the blades start chipping." Her mother has told her on her fifth birthday. She doesn't understand what it means, until she is given a sword as tall as her. A year later, she wields the sword with unsteady hands and a frantic heartbeat. She still doesn't understand any of it.

At six years old, she has joined the family business, cleaning up for others' mistakes like the mercenaries they are.

* * *

/

* * *

He is six when he discovers an aptitude in raising the dead.

But he is no magician, and the world looks down upon those who claim to have magic in their fingertips. The world tells them that they are delusional, that they are insane. He is a child playing with dolls, and that is all they will ever know. That is all they want to know.

He is also a child with dead parents.

At six years old, he learns to care for himself like a mother, tending to his wounds and telling himself to do better, he learns to protect himself like a father, learning how to push back against his aggressors, only to fall back on his spine while the other boys, taller and stronger than him, laugh mockingly. There is no one to tend to the wound inflicted on the inside, no one to protect him from forces bigger and stronger than him.

He dislikes the feeling of losing. He dislikes the taste of dirt in his mouth. He dislikes the feeling on someone else's spit on his cheek. He dislikes, hates, hates, hates, it all.

All he has left is his grandmother and her collection of dolls, puppets, she calls them. The lifeless figures look down on him from the high shelves of their home. He dislikes it, the way they stare at him like a sinner, silently condemning him for the death of his mother and father. He becomes angry, throws the dolls from the shelf and smashes them to the ground. He can still hear their laughter, mocking and teasing him. He hates it. He hates it.

"Here." One day his grandmother comes home with two dolls looking so much like his father and his mother, they are small, and fit perfectly in his inexperienced hands. "They aren't anything much, but look." With a flick of her wrist and a twist of her fingers, the dolls come alive, dancing in front of him to a soundless tune. The other dolls follow, no longer to they lie lifeless on the floor, but they dance along his the figures of his mother and his father. He laughs, and the feeling is unfamiliar, forgotten, but very much welcome. He feels warm, feels giddy and excited.

Later that day, he tries his own hand as making the dead come alive. The puppets, he now calls them, dance to a melancholy tune unheard of before. They will not mock him, never again will they do so, because he is their master, and their lives are dependent on him.

"Dance, my puppets." He says to himself, "Dance for your master."

* * *

/

* * *

She is ten when she first experiences rejection.

One day, a foreign samurai comes into town. The townspeople are afraid of him and their own samurai are suspicious of him, but he comes into the shops looking casual and relaxed, and not like any fighter they've encountered before. This is why the daimyo was very much excited to meet him. The daimyo greeted the man with all the pleasures their "simple town" had to offer, the golden bowls overflowing with emeralds and rubies from the mines, the fresh-water pearls strung into necklaces and bracelets, and of course, the best of them all, the swords crafted from the town's best smith, her father.

"Bring this to the daimyo before noon tomorrow." Her father tells her, his face sweaty and marred with soot, coal, and his hands rough and tender.

When she goes to the daimyo's estate, she meets the samurai. Her face flusters, a naive reaction, as he greets her with a humble hello. He walks in front of her, and she follows suit, knows that he is fully-aware that she doesn't know her way through the decorated corridors of the tower. When they reach the daimyo's room, she is greeted with riches she has never seen before, and she almost drops the sword on the floor.

"Ah, there she is!" The daimyo greets her, "The first born of our best swordsmith."

She steps forward and raises the sword to the daimyo, who then hands the sword over to the samurai, who unsheathes it automatically and raises the blade to the nervous daimyo's temple.

"The blade is pristine, wonderfully crafted, but it seems unfit for one like me."

She feels compelled to go against him. She exclaims, "My father worked hard on that blade!"

The samurai looks at her, curious and concerned, "Do you know how to fight?"

She bites her lips together, and nods. He sheathes the blade and tells her to lead him to a secluded area, and she follows, a naive child who falls into the trap of a much older, more experienced adult.

"Do you take students?" She asks as he hands her the blade, when he nods, she asks next, "Will you take me as one?"

It's impulsive, her question, as she recalls how she has watched him cut through falling leaves and air in abandoned courtyards. She thanks that he has not called out to her, but she thinks that he knows that she is watching him with all her childish curiosity, her naive desire to be the same, to be as great and as powerful as he is.

He doesn't respond, instead he readies himself for the attack, hand hovering precariously above the hilt. She does the same, recalling the first motion he makes when preparing for an attack. They are still in the silence, the wind rushes through the trees, and she is not nervous, she shouldn't be. Her only chance at becoming greater is here for the taking-easy, so easy, she thinks.

The first strike comes from her, the second, third, fourth, she attacks wildly, with a bursting energy that piques his interest. She is ferocious, like a predator desperate for a bite of fresh meat, but she is unoriginal, and he commends her ability to mimic him almost perfectly, his speed and his strength as well. The fight ends sooner than both of them expected. She stands her ground, though panting, though sweaty and dirty and cuts littering her clothes and skin.

"You're not good enough." The samurai says, and she feels the ground beneath her crumble from the mere breath of his voice. His power emanates from the way he carries himself, strong yet carefree, powerful but calm, and she cannot replicate it. She dislikes that she cannot replicate it.

The next day, the samurai disappears, but not without a word with her father.

"The blade is beautiful, but I think it would better suit the hands of your naive daughter."

Later that day, she becomes familiar with rejection, and it is the blade sitting on the top shelf, mocking her. And that night, she throws the blade to the fire and wishes it would burn until it has become nothing. But the following morning, when she stares at the blade, undamaged and still sharp and beautiful as ever, she wishes to be the same.

"I will be great. I will be invincible."

At ten years old, she becomes fascinated with turning bone into iron and skin into steel.

* * *

/

* * *

He is ten when he is on his seventh puppet.

They call him a prodigy, having learned the art of making lifeless dolls dance to soundless tunes. They call him a genius, as he is the only one in his generation to have learned the techniques of puppetry so quickly, so precisely. But really he is the only one in his generation to have learned puppetry. He is unique. He is original. There is none like him in the world.

He takes pride in his ability to become something greater than himself. He has always been a small child, barely the size of his mother's forearm when he was born. He was always bullied for his size by children bigger than him, stronger and louder than him. He keeps to himself most of the time, the silence is his friend, and the lifeless puppets his companions. He is quiet child, and the townsfolk love and fear him for it.

"He's a demon, that child." One of them says, "Raising the dead and making them dance. I say it's a curse!"

"They're puppets, you idiot." Another one replies, "But they creep me out just the same. Just look at those eyes, how could a child be left alone with those?"

"He must be a strange child," And another, "His parents died in the battle, after all. Must be hard going through life all alone."

He hates them. He hates their words, despises the taste in his mouth, but refuses to burst into loud anger and louder rage. He is quiet child; he lets his puppets do the talking for him. He sets up the stage, the bare and dusty ground is all he can afford, his not great enough for the coliseums and arenas, not yet. The adults watch him as he places three puppets, one in the form of a man, the other two in the form of animals, on the ground. He can feel their stare, mocking him with belittling eyes; to them he is nothing but a child with his toys. But they will see, they will see how great and how wonderful and how unique he is.

The confidence on his face is reminiscent of his father's, they think, as he readies his hands and puts on a show for them to see. He is a child, young and naive, but his mind is tuned to someone older, someone who wishes to prove himself to the world. A martyr, if they were to be blunt about it.

But he has not died for anyone, and his puppets do not exist for someone else. They see him as a joke, a child with his childish toys. They do not last to see the end of the show.

His puppets fall to the ground, an echoing clatter in the empty stage, but the tears in his eyes do not. He refuses to cry, as all actors are no longer themselves when they are onstage, and he continues the dance, his puppets slowly coming back to life with the rattle of wooden bones and polished skin.

"Someday, we will be great." He tells himself, "I promise."

He begins making puppets of his own design, his own characters, and his own creations. He feels like a god, giving life to the motionless, giving voice to the blind, giving sight to the deaf, but his creations are imperfect, they do not transcend from the material realm to the mortal one. They are not wholly alive, and he is not content.

He throws his fifth puppet to the ground and stomps on it. Angry. Raging. It is not perfect. It is not alive.

"What are you doing!"

There was a boy, barely older than him, who stops him. He knows who this is, knows the face, but not the name. How did he get here? What is he doing?

"Stop!"

The boy shouts louder, and this time the sound rattles him, shakes in his bones until he lifts his foot and looks at what he's done. He is the necromancer that has destroyed his creation, from the dead they came, and to the dead they shall return.

"Why do you care?" He asks the boy, who has the fragments of the puppet in his hands. "It's just another toy." He dislikes giving that name to his creations, but now it is nothing more to him but broken wood and bent steel. He dislikes it, dislikes its imperfection, dislikes the way its eyes remain the same, staring at him lifelessly. He hates it, hates it, hates it.

"It's not. You made it. It's yours."

At first he doesn't understand what the boy means. It's foolish, what he says, something so childish, something that a prodigy like him wouldn't even think of. And he hates it. Hates that there is someone else telling him what he should already know.

"I know." He gruffly replies, "So I can do anything I want with it."

He looks at the boy and waits for his answer, his retort, his foolish remark, but it doesn't come. Instead, the boy smiles and laughs, light and giddy, places a hand on his shoulder, warm and boyish and friendly, and he doesn't understand it. Is he making peace? Making friends? A prodigy doesn't need friends, only mentors. An actor has many acquaintances, but few friends. A puppeteer only has his puppets. So why?

"My name's Komushi."

At ten years old, he befriends another boy. It is the first time he has a friend, and the first time he sees his perfected creation in someone else. At ten years old, he makes his seventh puppet, his first chance at perfection, and it is his only friend in the world.

"You're my friend." He says to the motionless body, "And now I made you better, made you perfect."

In his mind, Komushi agrees.


	3. guide to the immortal life

**Martyrdom is an Art**

A/N: Revisions galore.

* * *

 _"He thought he would break her, but he was the one who broke in the end."_

 _Akasuna no Sasori wanted to achieve immortality, not godhood._

* * *

She is twelve when she discovers the secret to immortality.

Her father has told her of legendary swords, Totsuka, Kusanagi, Murai, and the myths surrounding them. Totsuka was known for its eternally sharp blade, that it could cut through stone a hundred times over and not dull in the slightest. Kusanagi was known for its weightlessness, that it had come from the sky itself and yet have the strength to cut through the earth. Murai was known for its ability to materialize from thin air by a mere mention of its name and its ability to pierce through its master without harming them. They all sounded fantastical, unrealistic, until she hears about it from someone else.

In the midst of the Third Shinobi World War, the Hagakure daimyo begins meeting with shinobi leaders from the countries of Suna, Konoha, and Iwa on separate occasions. Alliances must be formed, and Hagakure's military prowess would prove to be useful to these Shinobi countries. However, the greater population of samurai were in defiance of the daimyo's thoughts of forming an alliance with the shinob; the samurai's neutrality and indifference towards the affairs of the shinobi stem from their ideals towards battle and honor—to ally oneself with the shinobi would be in defiance of their honor code.

"You talk of honor, and yet you stoically watch others fall in battle?" The daimyo, Monogashira Hideki, spoke defiantly towards the heads of Hagakure's elite samurai clans: the Matsudaira, Sengo, and Amakuni.

"They are not our own!" The 4th Matsudaira head, Genji, exclaimed.

"These shinobi are out to take what is ours!" The 6th Sengo head, Okisato, added.

"How selfish you all have become," the daimyo mutterd before turning to the 5th Amakuni head, her father, Sadamune, "Don't tell me you agree with them, Sadamune?"

"As much as it pains me, times have changed. We must not allow ourselves to remain stagnant and apathetic to the world around us."

Genji was apalled. "What are you saying, Sadamune?"

"We cannot survive the war that is yet to come if we cannot accept that the age of the samurai is ending."

Okisato stood defiantly. "Sadamune!"

"How stubborn the samurai are…" Hideki sighs. "This stubborness was what brought our ancestors down. Sooner or later we would have to open our schools to the shinobi."

Sadamune frowned, knowing that their eccentric lord spoke truth. Okisato and Genji followed suit, breathing heavily as Hideki continued, "Well? What have we decided?"

The three heads exchanged glances with each other before nodding swiftly, ruefully. Hideki smiled at this. He placed in front of them three pieces of parchment with the names of the countries who wish for their allegiance. He then began to hum an old song, while hopping his finger from one name to the other. The eccenticities of the daimyo never left him, even in such serious matters such as this. The three samurai looked at each other nervously, hoping that their leader's enigmatic personality would not be the death of them.

"Oh. I didn't expcet this." The daimyo paused with a curious smile. "We shall send Konohagakure our greetings, then."

In the next few weeks, samurai and shinobi alike arrive and depart the formerly-exclusive village of Hagakure, but not without the chagrin of the former. An air of unease settles around the village and wrap around the usually collected members of the samurai. The daimyo, Monogashira Hideki, was of course delighted—he had been fascinated by the shinobi and with ninjutsu ever since he was young, much to the disapproval of his elders. But it is as he had believed, that the time will come that the samurai would have to lower their mighty walls in order to welcome the shinobi. Later that day, she tells her father of her desire to participate in the war.

"These shinobi are strong." She says. "I want to be stronger than them."

"And you will be." He replied. "Patience, my child."

"Paitence has brought me nothing!" She shouts.

And it is true for her, no matter how she follows the teachings of the Yatagare-ryu, no matter how strictly she adheres to the samurai code of honor, no matter how easily she handles the weapons handed to her, no matter how fast she learns, she will never deem herself worthy of weilding the blade that continues to mock her from above the shelf. Call it her pride and arrogance, but she is no more than a child brought up to the teaching that a battle is the true and ultimate testament to the samurai's strength and faith in his ideals. The Third Shinobi World War is the perfect battleground for her to realize this.

Her father sees the ambitious blaze in her eyes and wishes it no consume her.

"Very well." Her father says, tears welling up in his eyes, "But first, be safe, and then be strong."

She approaches the shinobi named Orochimaru then, and demands he take her as a disciple. "You will teach me to be greater than your fellow shinobi."

He gives her a knowing smirk. She might be young, but she knows of what it is to be desired in the world.

She departs from Hagakure with a promise of strength, that she will return from the war a victor worthy of the sword that had mocked her from before.

* * *

/

* * *

He is eighteen when he becomes immortal.

Rumors of the beginnings of the Third Shinobi World War are fast approaching, clawing at the borders of Sunagakure like ravenous wolves. He sits in his room, his hands working tirelessly over his latest creation, his twenty-fourth puppet. He looks to a corner of the room and frowns at the sight of broken wooden limbs and rusting metal joints; the broken puppets so worn and destroyed that he could not fix them. He pauses and looks at his hands, no longer soft and smooth, but calloused and scarred from the endless woodwork. He scowls, and sees his hands as proof of his mortality, as proof of his imminent death. Sooner or later, he's going to die just like everyone else. Sooner or later, his body is going to decompose and no one will remember him.

He clenches his fist around the wooden hand. He wants to be remembered. He doesn't want to be forgotten.

He grinds his teeth together. He wants to live forever. He wants to become immortal.

He looks at the incomplete model before him and narrows his eyes before quickly grabbing a kunai from his side and stabbing the sharp steel into the fragile wood. He digs the metal into the wood and imagines the body spitting out blood and screams, pleading for mercy, pleading for life. He stabs the body, again and again and again, and his blank expression doesn't change. But he is mad, mad, mad with rage at himself, at his mortality, and at his humanity.

When the puppet is reduced to nothing but splinters and shards, he sighs.

"The body is a temple of god," He whispers, throwing the broken pieces off of the table, "But my body will be god."

He gets a blank scroll from a drawer and begins drawing a schematic he hasn't done before, of himself, and of himself as a god.

He spends the rest of the day, and then the next, and the next, and several more, inside his room. He gives himself a pair of wings, spinning blades that can cut through flesh and bone, gives himself a devil's tail, laced his poison and tipped with a sharp blade, gives himself the hands of a god, with jets of water that can cut stone, gives himself the mouth of a dragon, a fire seal placed on top of his tongue. He makes himself a body better than he could have imagined.

He looks at the puppet and sees his eternity.

"The spend eternity in a box, or to spend the rest of my life running from death?" He asks himself in bittersweet recollection of how he has lived his life diverting death to others. He is a puppeteer, a manipulator, and he has manipulated death into claiming others rather than himself.

He is afraid of death. That he will never admit. He is too prideful to admit his own mortality. That is why he has made an immortal body to cage his mortal self. He will not grow old, and he will not die. That is what immortals are.

And that is what makes immortals alone.

The Third Shinobi World War comes to Sunagakure with its fangs bared and its claws sharp, but he is a god, and he cannot die.

"Come at me, death." He smirks, "For I have yet to make a puppet of you."

They know him as a prodigy, a genius, and that is what he shows them. A mere tug of his finger sends fifteen blades towards his enemies. A mere flick of his wrist summons three puppets from beneath his opponent. He is a master of his craft and the bloodshed is testament to his power.

The blood on his face is not his, for he cannot bleed. He is a god, he is immortal, and he does not bleed. In the Third Shinobi World War, he is given a new name, that of which rivals the gods.

"Akasuna no Sasori." He repeats the rumors surrounding him, "A perfect name fit for a god such as I."

* * *

In their youth—barely at the cusp of maturity—they learn about the world.

* * *

At the age of thirteen, she retrieves Kunishige from her father's corpse, and Yamenokayama from her mother's. In Hagakure's state after the Third Shinobi World War, Kanemitsu—her younger brother—is declared the 6th Amakuni head in her absence.

"They were assasinated by shinobi." An older cousin tells her in casual conversation, "I knew nothing good would come out of our participation in their affairs."

She could only imagine the whistle of Kunishige's battlecry as it cut through bodies as easily as it cut through air, the electric sparks across Yamenokayama's blade in the hands of her mother, the twinkling needles spun idly in the hands of her younger brother. They aren't dead. They couldn't be.

"Specialists, ANBU, they called them," An uncle said, speaking past his broken jaw, "We don't know where they came from. We don't know what they wanted. Even the Sengo and the Matsudaira clans were attacked." He recognized the fury hiding behind her eyes as he spoke, "Nothing good ever came from the shinobi."

She turns to Kanemitsu, who looks uncomfortable in his regal attire, quietly fidgeting with his fingers until he notices her. He frowns deeply before turning to the rest of the family. Kanemitsu spoke with a thick air of uncertainty, something that is to be expected from the eight-year-old boy. "The alliance is over. The shinobi are gone. We must…continue their legacy."

What legacy? Her father's smithy has grown cold. Her mother's school would sooner crumble. She balls her fists and grits her teeth—she doesn't know what to do, she doesn't know what should be done other than…

"I will find their killer." She declares openly, "I will take vengeance upon the shinobi who dared cross the samurai and then—" She turns to Kanemitsu, "I will return."

The family bursts into a loud argument: she should stay, she should leave, she should be the head, she should be the protector—they don't know what to do, they don't know what they should do. Sadamune is gone and his own children have yet to learn fully of the samurai code of honor. Kanemitsu embraces her tightly in an attempt to console himself, to plead for her to stay beside him, his beloved onee-san, and protect him, teach him—she is the only family member he could turn to. And she holds him, promises him that there is no better one for the position of being the family head because she doen't know what else to say.

Eventually, the family quiets down, turns to Kanemitsu who—through teary, bloodshot eyes—stares at them right back, breathing deeply, holding his chin up and pressing his fingers into his palms in order to regain his composure. He swallows his nervousness as he watches his sister step back before he speaks, "As the family head…I am allowing my sister, Shikaku no Shikai, to pursue the murderer of the previous head, my father, Amakuni Sadamune, and my mother, Amakuni Sumire."

The family nods—albeit hesitantly—in acceptance of his decision.

"Thank you." She says.

"Godspeed, sister." He mutters, frowning.

The time after the the Third Shinobi World War was deemed to be too late to beg for retribution from the gods, too late to achieve justice through someone else's blood, too late to do anything and too late to make something happen. But they are no shinobi, this war has caused Hagakure much and she is among the samurai who seek to attain justice through bloodshed. As one of the few samurai nations, their neutrality was their lethality, tey could be hired by any one of the shinobi nations to fight with them, but fortunately the Hagakure's selling price for their elite army was too high for any nation to buy, the price per fighter was a staggering three pounds of gold, and no shinobi country had that much to spare for a man whose loyalty can be bought so easily.

Now she has something to fight for, now she has something to hold on to. The sword that once mocked her sits on the topmost shelf and she is almost tall enough to reach it. The dust collects on the scabbard, hiding its lustrous shine away from prying eyes. It is her father's masterpeice, the final testament to her right as his daughter, and she dreams of one day being able to weild it with steady hands and a hardened heart.

"Stay a little longer, onee-san." Kanemitsu called out to her the night before she departs. "Please."

She holds Kanemitsu close and smooths out his hair as he cries into her shoulder.

When she leaves, all the information she has is that of a cracked mask, a broken tanto, and a spiral-shaped tattoo. There could be thousands of shinobi with the same monikers, and the thought intimidates her. It takes her three days to travel to Konohagakure in search for information about the war. The shinobi Orochimaru hails from there, and she finds it fitting that she begin there. Surely he would know about the shinobi sent to Hagakure during the Third Shinobi World War. So she finds herself at Konohagakure and stares in awe at the gates. This is her first time to travel to another village. The shinobi at the gate ask for her name, her place of origin, her purpose, all sorts of things.

"Shikaku no Shikai," She tells them, "I am from Hagakure, and I'm looking for Orochimaru. I heard that he hails from Konoha."

They allow her into the village, and she surprised by the idyllic pace of the townspeople. It has been quite some time after the war, and the people live as if nothing has happened. She clenches her fist in her sleeve in silent envy. She recalls how life in Hagakure after the war is cautious, the daimyo no longer accepts shinobi visitors into the city unless they have a prior message, and the samurai guarding the town have increased dramatically. If she was only old enough at that time, she would have been one of them as well, patrolling the town with a uniform of black and gold, a badge of silver, and a sword of chakra-infused steel. She would have been a captain with her skill, but she is young and the war has made the samurai realize that their number, no matter how skilled they are, is no match for the shinobi.

It angers her that the art of the samurai is being devoured by the shinobi.

The Hagakure bloodlines, her mother has told her, when mastered by the samurai, would make one alone more powerful, more effective, and more feared than any shinobi. She only hopes that hers reveal itself soon enough.

She walks through town and asks about the ANBU, and earns nothing but suspicious glances and fearful stares. The people of this village have not yet seen a samurai, she thinks. And when she turns into an alley, she is greeted by a group of shinobi, chūnin, she has heard from the civilians, that ask her for a fight.

Not verbally, but their stance told her just as much.

And she replies by jamming the hilt of Yamenokayama (she apologizes to her mother as she does this) into one's chest, smashing the scabbard of Kunishige (she also apologizes to her father) to another's abdomen, and throwing a fist at the last one's face.

Four seconds was all it took, but she is not satisfied. Her anger is not sated by the sound of their pain. She wants to kill them, kill them just as their fellow shinobi have killed her mother and father. She removes Kunishige and Yamenokayama, places them on the ground, seeing herself as unworthy of wielding them yet, and decides to fight them bare-handed.

Bare-handed is a lie.

She fights them with rough hands and heavy feet, sharp nails and sharper teeth. She bites one's jaw and peels off a piece of skin. She digs her fingers into another's neck and claws at his throat. She knees the last one to his head and kicks his knee. She hears the horrifying crack of bones, the shrill screams, and the gurgle of blood. It sates her anger, if only by just a little. She spits out blood and wonders what hers will taste like.

That evening, she is approached by the pale-skinned shinobi himself.

"So you have returned." He says to her in greeting. "But the war is over. I have no use for the likes of you anymore."

"No." She tells him. "You're going to help me find a killer."

She doesn't flich at the look he gives her, and he admires her audacity to demand something of him. When he doesn't reply, she continues, "I am indebted to you, Orochimaru-sama, but it is only right that you allow me this."

When he moves, she stops him by cutting the sharp tip of Kunishige across his palm in a blinding speed. "It is only right." She repeats.

When he nods in agreement, she cannot help but feel the sligtest victory. But neither she nor his spies tell him of her rage on the way back to Otogakure—the bloodshed she has caused and the bodies she has buried in her anger. She is a raging tide of vehement desire for he knows, and knows how to exploit well.

He approaches her with a devastatingly charming and malicious smile across his face. "I will help you." He places a hand on her head, "if you would continue helping me."

Shikai no Shikaku is a swordsmith's firstborn, an onna-bugeisha's daughter, a samurai from Hagakure, a weapon in the body of a human, but not worthy of her father's final gift. Not yet.

* * *

/

* * *

At the age of nineteen he learns about a technique that will crown him like how the gods have crowned Amaterasu with the sun.

In the last hours of the Third Shinobi World War, he discovers a technique from a man with only one eye, one of the vagrants from Ishigakure, a puppeteer just like him.

"Admit defeat." He says, all pompous and arrogant, Komushi brought to life with needles for hands and blades for feet.

"Barely the age of my youngest grandson and already so confident." The man scoffs, a puppet, a bird, Kisho he calls him, with wings of iron and a steel beak dripping with poison. "You can't kill me."

"I won't." He replies, a sadistic smile on his face, and send Komushi forward with claws and fangs bared, "I'll make you mine."

"Such a talented child you are." The man says, deflecting Komushi's every move with Kisho, "But I bet you wouldn't see this coming."

He retracts Kisho, lets the puppet fall from his control, and does several hand seals; dog, pig, rat, dragon, rabbit, tiger, ox-they are all he could remember before the man grabs a kunai from behind him and slices his palm, and continues, rat, boar, dragon, tiger, snake-

"Tamashī no tensō."

The next second, the man falls to the ground.

He stands, a foul smile gracing his features, and an out-of-place laugh threatening to bubble from his throat.

"He killed himself?" He couldn't understand it, and yes, he didn't saw that coming, but the man just killed himself. What a waste of his time, he thought.

And as he was walking away, he could hear he faint sound of wood clashing against each other as if a puppet show was about to commence. So he turns around and oh, was there a show waiting for it. All fifteen puppets the man had in his disposal comes back to life even without him alive.

He's in awe of it all, if not for the shred of jealousy within him. He might as well take the man captive and force him to teach the technique to him.

"See now, boy?" A puppet barks at him, "No matter the number of weapons you have at your disposal, you cannot kill me."

"Oh, I don't plan on killing you." He replies smoothly, "Not anymore."

And he uses the rest of his arsenal, battling puppet after puppet until one of them breaks from the hold of their master. He counts the bodies, one, two, three, five, nine…

He destroys every last one of the man's puppets, but without having some of his own perish in the heat of battle.

He walks over to the man and touches his throat.

The man is a liar, he is still alive.

"I told you." He says, pricking the needle of a syringe into the man's neck, "I'm going to make you mine."

A few hours later, the man wakes up with a gasping breath and a silent scream.

"Welcome to your afterlife," He greets the horrified man.

The man recognizes him, but barely, making out his features in the dim light. It has been three days since his last waking hour, and his body is weak and tired, thirsty and hungry. If this was his afterlife, he'd rather stay dead and asleep. He sees the chains on his wrists, his ankles, his chest, and cannot help but scowl at the young man.

"You are a monster." The man says before a needle pricks into his spine, eliciting a scream from his dry throat.

"If I was," He begins, removing the needle from the man, "I wouldn't have brought you to life."

"Do you want information?" The man stammers, "I'll give it to you! Anything!"

"The war is over. Your information would be useless to me now." He settles on a futon lying on the ground. He rolls out a kit filled with various tools, sharp tools, rusted tools, tools ripped from other puppets, tools ripped from other people.

The man looks at him, terrified at what sadistic monster has raised him from the dead.

"You weren't dead." He deadpans, a disapproving look on his face that slowly turns into an evil grin, "But there is something that could be of use to me."

He stands up, a rusted knife in his hands, and walks towards the man, who has gone paler than he thought he could have.

The man swallows a hard gulp, whispers, "I will tell you everything you want to know."

He replies by swiftly placing the knife on the man's neck, pressing the dull metal against the tender skin. The look on his face is ferocious, as if a predator who has cornerned his prey.

"Yes." He smiles, eyes wide with wonder and fascination, "You will tell me everything, and then you will die."

The man nods, accepts his fate at the hands of a mad god, and prays.

He releases the man from his chains, and collars his neck with a strange, yet equally terrifying contraption.

"You try to escape, you will die." He explains, "If you try to remove the collar, you will die."

The man does, instantly, prying the collar off with his hands until they bleed.

But they do not, instead, a needle in pricked into his neck and he is filed with a paralyzing shock that shakes his very bones.

"I am a merciful master," He says with a frown, "But I do not tolerate disobedience."

He places his hand over the man's chin and forces him to look to the side.

"These," He gestures to the pile of broken puppet limbs, "are all that remains of those who have dared disobey me."

The man wants to scream, to alert others of his torture, but nothing comes from his unmoving mouth.

"You will teach me." He says, "And that is your key to freedom."

The man accepts his fate, unmoving and unfeeling.

Four days pass, and the man is yet to taste the sweet kiss of death. The skin of is neck is bruised, pricked several times by needles carrying paralyzing poison. His bones are weak, and he has not eaten well. The young puppeteer on the other hand, has skin littered with shallow cuts and light bruises, eyes that are red from restlessness, and hands that have memorized the pattern of seals so much, that even in his sleep does he try.

"I have taught you everything!" The man cries out.

He scowls, bites his lip and curses internally.

"Not everything."

He stalks towards the man and lifts a foot to kick at his abdomen. The man falls to the ground, a ragged cough escaping him.

"I have given you all that you have asked." The man chokes out.

"Then what haven't I asked? What haven't I realized? Discovered? Tell me." He says, pleads almost, but he will not admit that to himself, "Please." He says under his breath.

"You are a persistent child, you are." The man struggles to laugh, "There is one thing you have yet to achieve."

The man pauses.

"What?" He exclaims. He doesn't like waiting. He hates waiting.

"Self-sacrifice." The man begins, "To give oneself wholly and purely to his chosen art."

He narrows his eyes at the man, scrutinizes his words and searches his face for any trace of a mocking joke. He stares into the man's face and sees nothing but calm demeanor and serious lines.

"Self-sacrifice?" He scoffs, "I have done nothing but pour myself into my work."

The man looks around his with eyes, and agrees, the level of craftsmanship in the boy's puppets could even rival his own.

"You are young. You have no idea of true self-sacrifice."

He fumes silently at the man's words, grinds his teeth against each other and vows to overcome the man's challenge.

"Self-sacrifice?" He repeats, eyeing a sharpened knife from his workstation, "I will show you, then, the greatest sacrifice an artist can make."

Dog. Pig. Rat. Dragon. Rabbit. Tiger. Ox. Snake. Horse. Bird.

He grabs the knife from the table and blows the sawdust off of it. He raises the weapon high in the air so that the blade shines in the sunlight streaming from the high windows. He doesn't remember how long it has taken him to realize what he must do in order to achieve immortality, but he laughs at the irony of the entire situation, of what he is going to do, and of what might happen to his body should he fail.

The man looks at him in horror.

"Tamashī no tensō." He says as a farewell.

He plunges the blade into his chest, and could feel, almost instantly, the very edges of his soul being pulled from his fingers. If this was to be his bitter, yet foolish death, then he would have the man turn him immortal from words alone. He knows the man will write about him, spreading his skill and his bloodlust to all and everyone. It is not the eternity he has imagined, but it is eternity enough.

But it is as if his eyes do not close when he is greeted by his afterlife. An afterlife of the same face, the same name, and the same environment.

The man looks to the source of the sound of rattling wooden limbs, and sees the boy's puppet of himself, that with steel wings and a poisoned tail, looking like a sick hybrid between an angel and a demon, and sees the puppet come to life with a sudden gasp for air and a quick, painful-looking backbend.

"He has done it." The man says to himself in horrified surprise.

The puppet begins to come alive, its fingers twitching uncontrollably, its limbs flailing wild, its pupils dilating. A horrific creature from an equally terrifying creator, the man thinks.

He approaches the puppet once it has gone still, and eyes it carefully. To the untrained eye, it would look like a perfect human being, flawless skin and soft hair. He reaches up to touch the puppet's serene face and-

"You have done well."

A pointed stiletto from the puppet's arm pierces the man's stomach. He coughs out blood, and holds unsteadily at the puppet's shoulders. He looks up and sees the boy's arrogant face replicated flawlessly on the puppet's.

"And as I have promised, I will grant you freedom."

The man's body slumps to the floor.

"But as one of my own puppets." He smiles viciously, eyeing a pair of scissors on his desk, "Nobumori-san."

Sugimori Nobumori, a master puppeteer from Ishigakure, becomes one of Akasuna no Sasori's masterpieces. He is given wings of razorwire and kunai, and a heart of sharp, sharp steel.

"I am a merciful master, aren't I, Nobumori?" He asks the unmoving body of the puppet, and tugs his finger.

Nobumori says yes, and the terrified expression will be kept on his face for all time.


	4. he and she

**Martyrdom is an Art**

A/N: Revisions galore.

* * *

 _"He thought he would break her, but he was the one who broke in the end."_

 _Akasuna no Sasori wanted to achieve immortality, not godhood._

* * *

She is seventeen.

She returns to Hagakure with a leaner frame and a colder stare. Nearly four year after the end of the Third Shinobi World War, she is still itching for a fight with shinobi, just to prove to them the strength of a lone samurai against their sheer number. She has yet to find the killer ANBU and she promises to do so even if she goes against a Kage on her own. She smiles as she eyes Yamenokayama and Kunishige on her belt and feels her mother and father watching over her like vultures.

Nothing has changed in Hagakure, except for her home, which has added to its exterior the graves of her mother and father. In the courtyard there are two tombstones, and written on them are the epitaphs:

"The life of a samurai begins and ends in death." - Kotowari no Sumire, Onna-bugeisha of Hagakure

"And I shall forge a sword stronger than will."- Amakuni Sadamune, Saijō Ōwazamono of Hagakure

"I will find them, I promise." She tells to their gravestones. "And I will bring honor to you."

When she asks for Kanemitsu, she finds that he had gone away from Hagakure in an attempt to preserve his life. Two years after her departure, Kanemitsu had entertained an audience with Konohagakure ANBU, requesting that he—along with all other heads of the samurai clans—agree to a permanent alliance with the shinobi country, upon reccomendation of the Hagakure daimyo and the Hokage.

"Why do you shinobi seek us out? We have no interest in your affairs." Kanemitsu, for all he's worth, has managed to gather his courage and remain vigilant in the face of the intimidating ANBU before him.

"It would benefit both of our countries if you would agree."

"And if we don't?" He scowls.

"I might not be in a position to say this but, this is an offer you wouldn't be able to refuse."

The masked man before him brings ill memories of his parents' deaths, and he grips his hands into tight fists under his thick robes. He narrows his eyes at the shinobi before him.

"What is your answer?" The shinobi asks clearly, and the entire audience of his family looks to him with an air of trepidation. They're afraid of the shinobi. Kanemitsu's frown etches deeper into his face—how can they call themselves samurai and cower in fear of this lone shinobi?

Kanemitsu looks the shinobi straight through his mask and declares with utmost conviction, "No."

Now, with the alliance of the shinobi heavily underway, no one knew where he had gone, and so she wonders about her younger brother. Two years without a single word would make anyone believe him to be dead, but she doesn't. Her younger brother and his invulnerable knowledge cannot give in to the call of death so easily.

Had she only known that he had achieved the Kanpeki Shuureigan at the time of their parents' deaths…

The winds blows and rattle the trees. It is almost winter, and the chill in the air resembles the cold of the underground labyrinth she recognizes as home. She looks to the side and sees that her father's smithy and her mother's dojo still stands, though abandoned. She enters the smithy and sees unfinished designs, tempered steel, and untouched coal sitting as if waiting for their master. The smithy's roof is thatched, and patches of sunlight stream down from the sky.

"The gods have given you a better place for you to perfect your craft." She says aloud, waling over and picking up an unfinished blade, an odachi with one of the sayings from her childhood engraved upon it:

"The stronger the heart, the sharper the blade."

She walks out of the smithy with the blade in hand, and digs it into the soil in between her mother and her father's graves.

"The stronger the heart, the sharper the blade." She repeats as she places the straw hat back onto her head and walks out of the compound in silence.

* * *

/

* * *

She books a night at the town's inn—thinking it unfit for her to stay in her family home even after all these years. She decides to take a simple room with a wall painting depicting the town's founder, Ashikaga Naitõ, in battle with one of the formidable Bijuu, the Hachibi, in high waters. She remembers the stories of her childhood, of the legendary samurai who aided in the suppression of the Bijuu from time long ago. And in the years after the Third Shinobi World War, it would be possible that the Bijuu would be summoned by the gods again.

She has a cup of warm tea in her hands as she looks to the night sky. She finds herself lucky to be above ground when the moon is full and bright in the sky. In the labyrinth, she could only imagine what the moon would look like, and sometimes ask the spies who've just arrived about the weather of the day.

She breathes deeply and finds comfort in the sounds of the night. The sound of crickets in the trees. The filling murmur of the street below. And not-too far, there is a woman singing an old song that she vaguely remembers.

"Okabe-dono!" An approaching shout breaks her from her reverie. The sound of the shoji doors loudly sliding open and closed from the next room emanate a sense of danger.

"Okabe?" The name is familiar to her.

"They have agreed." She can hear the voice from the open windows. She stands up and walks closer to her own window and sits by its edge.

"Kirigakure would be pleased to hear of this progress."

"But the Hagakure daimyo—"

"Knows so little of the ways of the shinobi world. He is still tied to the ideals of the samurai."

"Okabe-dono…"

"Our strength always goes to the highest bidder, am I right?"

"Of course."

She walks out of her room, and sees him come out of his moments later. The red dragonfly crest on his haori gives away his identity even before she sees his face.

"Okabe Atsumori." She says under her breath.

He looks at her over his shoulder with a stoic look, but gradually lifts the corners of his mouth into a smile. He is the samurai from seven years ago, blonde hair tied in a low ponytail, light stubble gracing his chin and jawline. She cannot deny his rugged attractiveness and offers him the coyest of smiles she could muster. He flushes.

"Ah, hello." He turns to face her fully and she notices how he hides his two swords under his haori, "And who might you be?"

"An admirer." She replies before passing by him, looking over her shoulder to the way he swallows at the sight of her.

"An admirer then?" He trails slowly after her. "Pardon, but might I know your name?"

"Depends."

She walks and he follows reluctantly after her. He thinks she is a courtesan dressed in ocean blue, and she thinks that allowing himself the vulnerability makes her job a little easier. When she enters a small restaurant, she feigns surprise at his humbled entrance and signals for him to sit opposite her, laughing when he does so hesitantly.

"You are a samurai." She comments lightly, eyeing the swords placed beside him.

"Ah, there is no need to be afraid." He replies, picking up a piece of sukiyaki and placing it into his mouth, "I am one of Hagakure's." he replies after eating.

"I see." She says, slicing a piece of tofu with chopsticks and eating it, "Since when?"

"A few months before the Third Shinobi World War."

"Really? And after the war?"

"I am whatever Hagakure wanted me to be."

"How commendable."

He looks down at his plate. "Right now, I am a samurai in service of the daimyo. After the war, he might as well kill himself for allowing such casualties to occur to Hagakure's own." He shakes his head. "I guess it can't be helped that our death will be dealt to us by the shinobi."

"Why do you think so?"

"There are only three villages left in this continent that still honor the samurai. Tetsu no Kuni, the most powerful, Hagakure, who form the best swordsmen, and the island of Shizoku, where the best metal ores are found. There used to be four, five, but the shinobi have destroyed them, and it's not impossible for them to do it again." He says somberly, "We are greatly outnumbered and we must do everything to stay alive."

He stops, but shifts his mood into a little more jovial, throwing her a casual smile and a laugh, "But stories like those make even the best food bitter! My lady, pardon my rudeness, I have been conversing with you without so much as knowing your name…"

She pauses momentarily, smiles, and places her chopsticks down on her plate. "Okabe-san, I'm sure you remember my father Amakuni Sadamune…"

The smiles on his face fades.

"Ah. I did not realize—" He stammers, moves his body back and bows deeply, pressing his palms against the tatami floor, "I offer my condolences, if I had known sooner who you were, I would have…"

"You wouldn't be able to do anything." She stops him. "You cannot raise the dead and neither can I. I only to get to know the man whom I had admired from my youth."

"You flatter me, young lady."

She raises her voice, "If you would have me, Okabe-san, I wish for you to accompany me tonight."

He closes his mouth, internally flustering in embarrassment.

"Your family, are they—" He begins, but stops himself.

"Are you rejecting me, Okabe-san?" She asks, leaning over and placing her hand so close to his

The sight of the bare skin of her collarbone make his lips go dry and his eyes focus on the line of her neck and shoulders.

So sharp, he thinks.

He swallows his nervousness and turns to her steel-gray eyes—he cannot deny her. And when she stands to walk away, he follows her, offers her an arm which she takes gladly. Her toned body leans towards his for a moment before she escapes his grasp completely, walking fast until they reach the open grounds.

"You surprise me." He comments, seeing how she walks ahead of him with sure footing. It is dark, and he tries to keep up with her. "I never thought you would be so bold."

She laughs. "Okabe-san, if I wanted to be romanced, I would have brought you into my room." She says over her shoulders, a suggestive look on her face, "or would you rather I come to yours?"

He laughs heartily at her suggestion, his face flushing deeply.

She brings him to a clearing in the woods, the same one that he brought her to seven years ago.

"I am going to ask of you only one thing, Okabe-san." She walks over to him.

"My lady?"

"Seven years ago, you granted me the opportunity to prove myself to you as a potential disciple. Will you allow me to do so again?"

He stands his ground, eyeing her figure carefully, she is lean and muscled, not slender and soft. "Seven years is a long time, surely you have met other swordsmen to teach you?"

"I want to experience fighting you again, if you would allow me." She says.

He scoffs, suddenly curious at her request, "If I were to lose?"

"Your swords. I want to have them." She states plainly, "And if you were to win?"

"You will be my woman," He says as if it's the most logical answer in the world, but stammers and realizes his foolish answer. "My student, I mean, and I will teach you everything you have so desired."

"It sounds a wonderful challenge, Okabe-san." She smiles. "Would you lend me a sword?"

"Its name is Hasumi." He tosses her over the wakizashi on his belt. She unsheathes the blade partially, admiring the way the moonlight gleams on it.

"A beautiful sword." She remarks, unsheathing the blade fully.

"A beautiful sword befitting the swordsmith's daughter." He says, so reminiscent of the words from the past, as he unsheathes his own blade, "Shall we?"

She doesn't answer with words, instead she answers him with her body, charging at him with the blade aimed to kill.

She strikes him the same way she has done before, she is on the offensive, while he blocks and deflects her attacks almost effortlessly. Almost. She is faster than him, he knows, but wonders at the same time why her movements are restricted, as if she is holding back. He looks at her style, the way she holds the sword with her left hand, and then her right, which is her dominant hand? Which side does she favor? He cannot tell.

"You are fast." He commends her speed, and how composed she is even after being on the offensive since their duel started. "I doubt you train on your own?"

"I train with the trees." She replies, shifting her weight as she moves back, placing a good distance between them.

"You are holding back." He states. "Is it the kimono?" He points to her clothes, to the obi tied around her waist and the elegant way the skirt falls over her legs. Of course she wouldn't be able to move as freely as him, who is dressed in a Hagakure samurai's typical attire, a kamishimo consisting of a deep-blue hakama and a golden kataginu worn over a black kimono. His white haori lay discarded on the grass.

"If you are asking for a woman to undress, Okabe-san…" She drawls out.

" I ask of no such thing!" He defends, "If you wish, we can continue our duel in the morning, the night is too precious to be spent spilling blood. I would hate to ruin such a fine dress."

She thinks he's referring to his, the kimono she wears is cheap and she doesn't like the unnecessary flattery. She places the sword on the ground, before removing her geta and placing it beside the blade. She smiles, baring her teeth before him like the fangs of a predator.

"If I wanted a duel in the morning, I would have told you that." She says, standing upright and loosening the tie of her obi, "You do not take me seriously."

He sees the skin below her collarbone, and asks, "What are you doing?"

The kimono is loose about her body now, her arms able to move freely and he legs no longer restrained by the skirt or the geta. She feels the earth and the grass beneath her feet and it feels too familiar with the grounds of the arena in the subterranean labyrinth.

She picks up the wakizashi. "Treat me like a rival, Okabe-san, an enemy."

She waits for him to take the offensive.

It is almost agonizing, she thinks, that he hesitates as if in fear of her. She smiles internally; she is so close to becoming feared and powerful.

"One day, you will be like me." The pale shinobi says, "Feared and powerful and immortal."

The remembrance of his words bring a pleasant shudder to her spine, and she wonders when she would find those who killed her mother and father and destroy them with her raw, brutal strength refined to become the sharpened edge the shinobi has trained her to be.

"Do you hesitate, Okabe-san?" She calls out, "I hate waiting." She hisses, and takes the offensive, charging towards him with a blinding speed.

She is faster, lighter on her feet, and more ferocious in her attacks, uses her whole body, kicks and claws at him. He doesn't know if her mother's school taught such beastly techniques, then again, he is sure that she has learned these from elsewhere. Her form is inelegant, but spontaneous and quick, and he is left chasing after her blows.

Eventually, there are cuts on his body that he doesn't recall being made, but hers is still untouched, unmarred by blood. It is almost like a dream on the verge of turning into a nightmare, he thinks. She has the blade pointed to his neck and he is tired and kneeling before her. She likes this, this sight of having someone kneel before her as if pleading for mercy.

"Congratulations." He breathes out. "The seven years has done you well, but I still cannot remember your name."

"I had none when we first met." She replies, not lowering the sword. "Would you like to know what name I carry?"

"It is only fitting to know the name of one of the strongest women I have ever met."

"You flatter me, Okabe-san." She smiles mirthlessly. "Your sword?"

He swallows, and removes his sword from his belt, raising it to her. She drops her armed her hand and takes the sword, admiring its craftsmanship.

"It was made by your father." He says.

She forces the blade out of the scabbard with one hand, and scrutinizes the blade, unsigned.

"So it seems." She mutters. He is lying.

"What do you wish to do now?" He asks, not getting up from his knees.

"The night is long, and I'm alone." She beckons, "Join me."

She walks back to the village, and he follows her, scrambling to get himself together. She is young and he should know better than to play along with her, but he feels as if she knows more about that world than he does. Part of him is tempted to see how much of the world she knows, and part of him wishes that he would just leave her be.

And not too far, another follows after them, looking with glassy, lifeless eyes.

* * *

/

* * *

"Ah, and I do not even know your name." He says as they approach his room. "Good night, then." He says nervously, forgetting the words she has said earlier.

"Join me, Okabe-san." She leans towards him, "Tell me of your adventures."

"If that is what you want…" He looks over to his mused futon and lets her slip past him, her hand casually brushing over his.

She invites herself inside and sits on his bed, not caring for its state, and coyly leans back on her arms, watching him with half-lidded eyes. He is attractive, she muses. He opens his mouth to say something, but instead his face flushes and he apologizes.

She frowns, bored out of her mind and thinks to quicken their conversation. "They say my family inherited one of Hagakure's bloodlines."

"I've heard of it, yes."

"Shuureigan." She says, "Have you an idea of what it does?"

"Unfortunately I have only heard of it in legend." He replies.

"I could show you." She suggests.

"You have inherited it?"

She smiles and he grows nervous. The air in his room feels dangerous somehow, and yet—

"Shuureigan." she says, picking up one of his swords she left beside the futon.

"What do you think it does?" She unsheathes the sword, and throws the scabbard to the wall with a clatter.

She gives him a chance to answer, but his only response is the way he scrambles on his hands and knees to get the other sword. She scowls at this action and thrusts the blade deep into his back, hearing his fading cry and the sound his body makes when it falls to the floor. She then delivers a second strike, pressing the edge of the blade into his neck.

When he no longer breathes, she moves quickly, discarding the sword and bringing his unmoving body to the futon. She wraps his body in the blankets.

"Okabe Atsumori." She takes a folded list from her obi and recites aloud, "Male. Aged twenty-nine. My childhood hero. Kirigakure's spy in Hagakure since the Third Shinobi World War. Killed seventeen samurai, two of which were part of the disciples of Hagakure's Hagane Juttetsu, and fifteen civilians." She uses his blood on the sword to cross out his name. "You are hereby declared dead, and as proof, I will be taking your swords."

She takes the two blades in her arm, and picks up his discarded haori as well. She knows that when she returns to her room, someone is waiting for her.

But when she opens the door, there is nothing but the empty space and the cold bed.

In the hallway, however, stands a man hesitant in his resolve to come after her just as he did in the forest.

* * *

/

* * *

He is twenty-three.

The years after the Third Shinobi World War are predictable, and he thinks to himself if he'd just disappear earlier and made his life more interesting. The pace of Sunagakure after the war is slow and relaxed, the Kazekage is confident in his own skill and the shinobi are arrogant in theirs. At fifteen years old, he had in his arsenal seventeen puppets in top form and pristine condition. Now, he has double the number. Soon, he would have an army that would rival any village that he would come across. He would be revered as a god.

"And my kingdom shall be rooted on their fear."

At seventeen years old, his last mission was to secure a watchtower at the very edge of Kaze no Kuni that was overtaken by a rival shinobi country, therefore allowing entry to those who would threaten Sungakure. It's an easy missions, he thinks, and allows him an opportunity to survey for new puppets legally.

But at the same time, he dislikes that he is being sent to do such menial tasks, ordinary shinobi could do that same thing. So he proposes to the Third Kazakage that he be sent alone, boasting about his clean record of successful missions and his mastery in puppetry. The Kazekage frowns at his arrogance, but agrees to his decision, telling him that they will send another party should he not return to the village two days from the missions start.

Three days have passed and he hasn't returned.

Four days, and even the reinforcements do not follow.

The Kazekage begins to worry.

He sends another party and the information he receives appalls him.

"The shinobi from Shimo no Kuni as well as our own shinobi are dead. The boy, however, is missing. Should we search for him, Kazekage-sama?"

The Kazakage looks up at the scout. The boy couldn't have been taken by the rival shinobi, the reports say that there were only seven of them in the watchtower and all the seven are dead. He wouldn't want to jump to conclusions, but the very answer must be staring right into him. "We will declare him as dead, along with the rest of them. He will be named a martyr who has fought for Sunagakure all the years of his life."

The scout looks at him, shocked, "Kazekage-sama, I-"

"If he returns, he will labeled as a traitor."

The scout doesn't understand, but carries out the words of the Kazekage without another word.

That night, the scout meets the face of the traitor in her very home.

"You told the Kazekage about me." The boy, barely looking as if he wasn't in a fight days prior, says to her from the shadows.

"I have do as you have told," The woman says, looking around the room for any signs of forced entry, she finds none. "My children, please." The woman pleads.

The boy points to a closed door. The woman scrambles to the closed room and opens it with a rattle and a frustrated groan. When she opens it, she takes her children and embraces them, suppressing the tears forming in her eyes.

He looks at the sight blankly. He had never felt the warm embrace of his own mother. Or he could have, he just couldn't remember. Why can't he?

He imagines his own mother coming to embrace him and feels a pang of jealousy rattle his bones. He has not yet perfected the soul transfer technique, and his soul is forced to return to his real, human body. Three days after he has transported his soul to the puppet body, he wakes up with an aching, human chest. It was right that he bring his body to a medic and force them to heal the deadly wound on his chest should a case like this happen.

At seventeen years old, he still bears the body of a growing boy, not immortal, not invincible.

"Thank you for your cooperation, Kaijou-san." He says as he approaches the entrance door.

"You won't come back, will you?" She calls after him, still clutching her crying children to her.

"I would be named a traitor if I did." He says for a goodbye. He knows that he is already a traitor, and he wants nothing more to do with Sunagakure.

* * *

/

* * *

Later, he decides to visit his grandmother for a final time. But it is she that greets him first,

"What have you done?" She looks as if accusing him of murder.

"What are you talking about, obaa-chan?" He says, feigning obliviousness at her statement.

"The Kazekage has declared you dead."

He takes a seat at the dining table, welcoming himself back inside their home. "Then the Kazekage is wrong." He says with a casual shrug. "It seems that even the mightiest shinobi are not immune to making some mistakes."

She scowls at him. "And you hate making mistakes."

He looks at the tea on the table, looking distant and aloof. "You made tea."

"Your favorite." She says. "In case you were coming back."

He pours himself a cup and sees the steam; the tea is new, made as if she knew he was coming back. But she doesn't know why he would come back, what he would come back for. Or does she? He takes a sip and allows himself a chance at vulnerability.

It is poisoned, he can taste a hint of the bitter, minty herb that was part of the first poison his dear grandmother taught him. And now she is going to kill him, or has planned to.

"Your tea, it has a hint of that herb…" He says. "It was part of the first poison you taught me."

"Impossible—!" She exclaims.

"Would you like a drink, obaa-chan?" He smiles at her maliciously.

"What have you done?" She raises her voice.

The smile fades from his face. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Quit it." She hisses, feeling the fire from her youth, her anger and her snap, coming back with a harsh vengeance. "Your puppets, they are-"

She looks to the open crack of his door and sees a glimpse of his collection staring back at her.

"They're inferior to yours, I can imagine." He frowns. "You look at them and only see failure, don't you?"

She softens at the sight of her grandson looking down upon his own creations, puppets that could rival her own.

"I didn't say that." She says under her breath. "They seem to lack part of their creator, that's all."

"What do you mean?"

"They seem to be independent of you. Remember that puppets are not independent from their master. I look at your puppets and see human beings."

It's strange, the way a smirk comes up on his face.

"Maybe they are human beings, or they once were." He replies casually.

She turns around, looking at him with a terrified expression.

"Human? Human puppets?"

"Of course, obaa-chan." He smiles. "The best materials for such fine puppets are found in the battlefield after all."

She clasps a hand over her mouth at the revelation. Their home is now a grave for all the souls of his creations. She narrows her eyes at him, "I didn't raise you to be a monster."

"You were never there when I needed you."

"Your parents loved you."

"They died!" He shouts. "If they did, they wouldn't have died so foolishly."

"I loved you." She says, the regret visible on her face. He understands, she couldn't care for him now that she has found out the truth of his creations, after all, she detests the use of actual human bodies in puppetry, calls them a forbidden art.

"You loved your grandson, but not me." He stands from his seat and approaches her.

"No one could ever love me." He smiles at her. "I'm a monster in your eyes, aren't I?"

She doesn't respond.

"I killed those shinobi."

"The Third Kazekage can overlook it." She suggests tentatively.

"How? Are you going to manipulate him like all the others that have seen through my mistakes?" He scoffs. "Is that what love is, obaa-chan? Forcing others to look in your direction?"

"You are not a monster, Sasori." She calls him by name, and for some reason it makes the entire situation worse. He turns his back to her and balls his hands into fists so hard that they shake.

"I don't want you to fix this." He says, calm and seemingly collected, but within him a storm rages. "You have done enough for me and for the village."

He walks to leave.

"Thank you, obaa-chan." He gives her one last smile.

But before he reaches the door, he is embraced by her, warm and soft and solid and strong.

"Goodbye, my grandson."

When he leaves the village in the dead of night, he thinks to himself if she really did love him to the point of wanting to sacrifice herself for his own sake. But he is tired of having people look over him as if he is something to be protected, not feared.

Gods ought to be feared more than loved, after all.

* * *

/

* * *

It has been six years since he has left the village. He is twenty-three and with an arsenal of forty-six puppets made from shinobi hailing from different countries. If he were that intent of making himself a god, he would have made himself a temple and his worshippers would be his very creations.

But he is not so much egotistical as to make his own religion that would revere him as a god. No, he isn't that sort of man that wants immortality to claim power. He is an artist, and the art he makes would transcend the frailty of human life. His own creations would make him into an immortal if he would not be able to make himself into one should his body fail.

* * *

/

* * *

He hates failing, and the puppet body he has made of himself looks at him with lifeless eyes.

"Don't look at me like that." He scoffs, forcing the puppet to look away with a flick of his finger, but he is too forceful and the puppet falls to the floor with a resounding clatter.

He is in Ken no Kuni, a small country to the northeast of Sunagkure and he feels out of place, there are few shinobi and the ones he has encountered in the traveler's inns are merely passing by without an intention to visit the country's main village.

"What's in Hagakure?" He asks the inn's receptionist on his way out. He's heard of fellow shinobi talk about leaving immediately and avoiding crossing the path going towards the village as if in fear. Hagakure, he hasn't heard about a village with that name.

"The village isn't that welcoming to shinobi, sir." The woman says, taking the coins from his hand. "Ever since the war, it's been very picky about who goes in or out. I've heard that shinobi come in as travelers, and they come out dead."

"Isn't Hagakure a shinobi village?"

"Nope. It's one of those samurai countries. They aren't as scary as the ones from Tetsu no Kuni, I'd give you that."

"Samurai?"

"Yeah. They make the best swordsmen." The woman lifts her pipe to her mouth.

"Anything else I should know about the village?" He prods, looking charming and young as he could be.

"If you ain't from Konoha, you'd best avoid the village entirely." She remarks, smoking from her pipe. "You from Suna, right?" She notes his forehead protector.

"I'll be sure to avoid the village then." He replies.

"You do that." She replies as if shooing him away.

But he does the precise opposite of that.

He hides his forehead protector and replaces it one from Konoha, one that he picked up from the battlefield from time ago. He doesn't know what a samurai looks like and based from the woman's description of the village, it piques his interest and curosity. And when he reaches the village, he sees its foreboding walls and its metal gate. He is greeted by two tall men wielding nothing but swords, and if they are samurai, he is not impressed.

"Where are you hailing from, shinobi?" The taller one, a burly man with a half-shaved head, asks him, a hand placed on the hilt of his sword.

"Konohagakure, sir." He lies, "I have been sent to deliver a message."

The thinner samurai replies, "Konoha. They don't know when to stop with their messengers."

"The daimyo is not receiving any visitors at the moment." The latter one adds, "To whom will you deliver your message?"

He doesn't reply, but surveys the area with his chakra. He senses thirteen other samurai from above the walls. If he were to attack them…

"I will wait for him." He replies, "The Hokage has emphasized that I not return to the village unless I have delivered the message."

He hopes for his lies to spin around them.

"I'm afraid you will have to wait for days." The thin samurai crosses his arms over his chest.

"I will." He presses.

"Let the kid be, Raisho." The other one says, "If he's willing to wait, he'll wait."

"We can't let shinobi have their way with us." He complains, "What happened to our honor?"

"Sorry kid, he's just a little bugged off about everything after the war." The burly samurai moves both of them aside. "Name?"

"Ikeda Yomu." He replies with a name he remembers from the war. Surely, he thinks, the samurai aren't aware of the fallen shinobi in the war.

"You have been granted entry, Yomu-san." The taller one says. "Raisho?"

"Fuujite: Zanpa." The thin samurai raises a hand to him and the kanji for "seal" appears on his palm, glowing for a moment, before fading. The same seal appears on his forehead for a moment, though he is unaware. He doesn't know what the seal is for, but he assumes that the samurai are serious, if not fearful of the shinobi. He doesn't ask and neither of the samurai tell. He makes his way into the village with a nod for goodbye.

And almost immediately does the idyllic life of the countryside contrast itself with the tireless murmur of the village. Everywhere he would look, there are people armed with swords, katana, wakizashi, nodachi, tanto. It is either in fear or in showcase of the military prowess of the village. It would be difficult for him to act immediately. He has to find a way to worm his way into the civil life of the samurai, learn their ways and later on manipulate them to his will like puppets on a string.

He gives himself six days, and on the sixth he would have acquired at least one samurai puppet. He wouldn't set himself up for failure, and if he would acquire two, then good for him. Might as well make it three, if he could.

* * *

/

* * *

Two days have passed and he discovers that samurai are like shinobi to an extent that they both use chakra, but the shinobi are more reliant to it than the samurai. The samurai rely on their physical prowess, their strength and ability without using chakra, as he sees in the various dojo in the town. The different schools teaching different offensive and defensive styles, kenjustu, iaijutsu, and even schools that teach specialized ways on combatting ninjutsu and genjutsu without so much as to use chakra.

The samurai are superior to the shinobi in ways that he wants to achieve as well.

They aren't relying on their mastery of chakra to overpower their opponent, rather, they use chakra to greater enhance their abilities, increase the range of their weapons, and harden their bodies close enough to the strength of steel.

He watches them in their dojo, watches every move they make and listens to every song of their blades. They fascinate him more than the shinobi of the other villages. Ninjutsu is predictable, and every element he has seen he knows how to combat, every taijutsu move he sees can be easily replicated with a puppet, every illusion can be broken and every hidden technique can be countered. But to battle against an art that is designed precisely to defeat every teaching of ninjutsu; it almost terrifies him.

Almost. His art was designed to replicate and manipulate, after all. And he doubts that the samurai are that knowledgeable in puppetry.

He observes their samurai, researches on their rankings, their abilities. The third day passes and he has not yet found a suitable candidate to become one of his creations.

He ventures into the other districts, deciding on finding information from actual people in conversation. In the night of the third day, he goes into one of the places he's heard that samurai frequent when not on alert. It is a brothel, and he expects nothing more. The samurai are still human, after all, and they are not immune to the desires of the body.

The very idea that he has the same body sickens him.

* * *

/

* * *

The brothel, aptly named Senbara, is decorated in provocative shades of red and gold, several vases of filled with deep red roses litter the room. The heavy scent of perfume fill his nose and he almost chokes. Is it poison? Some sort of genjutsu? He cannot tell.

"The roses welcome you, shinobi." A woman's voice calls out. She is dressed in a regal-looking kimono, colored a deep shade of red and decorated with golden swirls. The neckline falls gracefully around her shoulders. She is voluptuous, beautiful to a certain extent, but the tired rings around her eyes and her no-nonsense demeanor make her seem to demand his respect rather than his lust. In between painted fingers, she holds a smoking pipe.

"You're too young-looking." She narrows her gaze at him, almost scrutinizing. "Find some other brothel, kid."

"I hear the samurai frequent this place."

"The samurai are not my business." She replies, taking a seat behind a busy desk. "They come and go, and generous patrons are hard to come by these days."

"I'm willing to pay." He presses.

The woman looks at him in disbelief. "You are." She points to a set of photos on the wall. "But these women don't come cheap. We only offer the best."

The statement makes him nauseous. He looks to the wall and sees images of women with fake smiles.

"Which of them are frequented by the Hagane Juttetsu?"

The woman places the pipe on the desk in an echoing clatter. "You ask too much of me, shinobi. I care not for Hagakure's elite, as long as they pay they're identities might as well be unimportant."

"I'm looking for someone." He faces her. "They told me he's a traitor."

The woman is unfazed by him, but she gives in to his boyish charm with a heavy sigh. "Mariya. She's their favorite."

He looks back to the walls and sees the Mariya she is talking about, a clean-faced brunette with painted lips and a somber look on her face.

"She doesn't come cheap, boy." The woman calls out, "It's Seven thousand ryo for conversation. Twelve thousand for foreplay. Seventeen for sex. You have three hours, nothing more, nothing less." She speaks of sex as a transaction, something impersonal and exclusive business. He wonders what the women think of this.

"I can pay twenty." He blurts out.

"For twenty, " the woman smiles, "You might as well do whatever the hell you want."

He takes twenty 1000-ryo bills out of his satchel and the woman leads him across corridors that echo the sounds of pleasure and pain. The halls are painted with provocative images of sex and he avoids looking at them.

They reach the end of the hall, to the left is a staircase, and to the right in a door.

"He's giving you twenty, Mariya." The woman says, knocking insistently. "Be good."

She leaves him and he opens the door the moment she turns a corner.

There was a woman on the floor, Mariya, who wore her robes loose about her body as if she had just finished with a customer. She scowls at him.

"Shinobi." She greets him, eyeing the bottle of sake beside her and the half-drunk cups with it. "I haven't seen the likes of you ever since the war." She pours the sake into a glass, and invites him. "You going to ogle me or am I going to make your twenty worth it?"

She says with a frown. He can tell that she's tired, bored even.

"It's the middle of the day, kid." She drinks the sake. "Get in here or get out. Shitsu-sama rarely grants requests for refunds, anyway."

He knows she's referring to the woman from downstairs. He enters, still smelling the strong perfume. It could drive him mad, he thinks. He coughs and she notices.

"You aren't used to the scent." She remarks coolly. "It's used to hide the stench of sex. You'd be gagging if it wasn't for Shitsu-sama's technique."

"Technique?" He asks. So it was a genjutsu. "Is she a shinobi? No, a samurai?"

"Beats me. She takes care of us, and that's all I need to know." She says, and after there is nothing.

The silence is overbearing.

"You want something," Mariya states, looking at him coyly under her painted lids and long lashes. "And you think I'm going to tell you."

He stiffens. Has she seen through him?

"The Hagane Juttetsu." He states. "I want to know about them."

"Ah, and you think some prostitute like me's going to tell you all about them."

"No, but I think you're going to show me." He replies with a smile of his own, approaching her slowly and almost seductively.

He is young, handsome and attractive, charming and manipulative, and he might as well make the most of it.

It's not like he's going to be in this body forever.

* * *

/

* * *

Sex, he realizes, has made him more repulsed by this body that he was before.

The release was pleasant to a certain extent, however, all his pent-up frustration in the three days without spotting a potential candidate has been relieved, though he knows only temporarily. And there was this particular action that Mariya did that made his eyes want to roll back into his head and-

This is the first time a woman has made his vulnerable, his body no longer rigid and stiff, but soft and sensitive. The very edges of his mortality at the tips of his still-tinging fingers.

He hates how this woman has made him submissive to her wiles.

"Okabe Atsumori." The woman sits upright, not caring for her bare chest which was marred his scratches from his nails and slight bruises from his fingertips. "He's the one you're looking for, I think."

She picks up the bottle of sake and drinks straight from it. How a woman like her could have the stamina or the stomach, he continues to wonder.

"You asked something about the strongest samurai I know." She shrugs, rolling her eyes at his post-coitus expression. It's almost as if he's repulsed by her. "He's the one, well, at least in terms of his bed manners. Man can keep going forever."

He pretends to have not heard her last statement, and forces himself awake.

"Drink?" She offers the bottle to him. "It helps."

"I appreciate it, Mariya-san." He says, sitting upright and still feeling a throbbing in his head.

"What, the sex?" She laughs humorlessly. "Business is business, kid." She finds him to be reminiscent of those boys she used to crush on when she was younger, charming and clueless.

He stands slowly, finding his footing uneven, and supports himself on the door. He hates how this has made him, hates the weakness of the human body, and the insatiability of human desire.

"He's staying at an inn for a few days. Akitame's the name, I think. Says he's got business elsewhere, but I don't believe him." She says before taking another gulp of sake.

"Thank you for the information, Mariya-san."

Mariya looks at him and laughs to herself. Shinobi are so much different than the samurai. Whether it was good or bad, she didn't care.

* * *

/

* * *

It is the morning of the fourth day and he finds the inn, Akitame, named after its first owner, in the heart of the bustling town. He observes the entry door at first, seeing people come in and out, most of them armed with swords, and few armed with spears. It is a fighter's inn, he thinks, and assumes cheap prices and simple rooms.

And he assumes right.

"I'd like a room." He approaches the receptionist, an elderly man with a pair of reading glasses and a pencil tucked behind his ear.

"You have business with the Hakage?"

"Just passing by." He replies.

"Go get some food first, you look like you need it." The receptionist points to the curtained doorway without a second glance. "There's no vacancies yet."

He enters the inn's dining hall. It s filled with armed men and women talking rambunctiously amidst large servings of food. It is reminiscent of the restaurants in Suna, he thinks, but the atmosphere is different, almost too casual and relaxed. The samurai are either confident in their ability or they do not notice him entirely.

Breakfast, he looks at the menu, is a wholesome serving of rice, fish, meat, and vegetables for the price of what would usually constitute of two meals in a shinobi village. He orders one, and is unsurprised by the large serving, fit for a good two people. He begins eating in silence in an attempt to drown out the sound and observe the samurai. Who could Okabe Atsumori be? Is he old? Young? Younger than him? What is he wearing? He should have asked about him to Mariya, but the questions have escaped his tired body.

"Usually they ask if you'd prefer a meal for one." A voice breaks his thoughts and he looks to his right.

There is young woman, pale skin, deep blue hair cut short and jagged, wearing a kimono the color of the ocean, gray and blue and white.

"But I can assume that you've the money to pay." She shrugs. "Pardon the intrusion."

He stops her from walking away.

"No, I." He pauses, having already absent-mindedly sparked a conversation, "I wouldn't mind company."

"Shinobi rarely go out alone." She replies, looks at his bountiful meal and compares it to hers, the soup and the rice wouldn't be able to satisfy her, no. "I'd ask why you're in Hagakure."

"Just passing through. I'm meeting my party in an inn outside the village and I'd like time to myself before that." He lies, and he assumes that she believes it because she takes a seat across from him.

"Shinobi aren't allowed entry just because." She separates her chopsticks his just one hand and begins eating. "You must be someone important, then."

"I keep to myself." He wants to end the conversation there, but she prevents him by replying,

"Just like a samurai." She replies and eyes the untouched meat on his plate. "Tell me, shinobi, what brings you to Hagakure?"

He hesitates, thinking of the possibility that she has seen through him and dislikes the feeling of other people getting the best of him. "I'm looking for a man."

"What a coincidence." She smiles. "I just hope we aren't after the same person."

"I doubt that as well."

He hopes so.

And then there is silence, uncomfortable and awkward and he wants to leave and make her forget about ever meeting him, but he needs the sustenance, and the food is particularly too good to waste.

She finishes her food quickly, and says, "The food is good, shinobi. You might as well try to enjoy it." before standing to leave without so much as a goodbye.

His eyes follow her as she leaves; there is something about her that threatens him. Surely, there is something about her that is dangerous and threatening to his mission of acquiring puppets. And much as he dislikes the idea of following her, he sees that it would be no harm to actually pursue the idea. She might even lead him to potential candidates.

He hates looking at the brighter side of things, but sees this instance as an opportunity.

And in his path to immortality, he will take all and every thing he believes would be of use to him.


	5. like footprints on the shore

**Martyrdom is an Art**

A/N: Revisions galore.

* * *

 _"He thought he would break her, but he was the one who broke in the end."_

 _Akasuna no Sasori wanted to achieve immortality, not godhood._

* * *

She is seventeen when she first meets him.

It is the morning of her sixth day out of the labyrinth and she decides to eat in the inn's dining hall. It is filled with a boisterous crowd of samurai and onna-bugeisha and she has expected this, life in Hagakure left little opportunity for these men and women to indulge in casual conversation, after all. What she doesn't expect, however, is the lone shinobi sitting in a far corner of the hall, looking sad and surprised by the quantity of his meal.

She compares it to hers and thinks about asking him to share. A foolish move on her part, but compared to what she does next, it is an abbaration.

She decides to converse with the shinobi, knowing that he is from Konohagakure from the symbol on his forehead protector.

She assumes he is new to Hagakure.

"Usually they ask if you'd prefer a meal for one."

He looks at her blankly and she notices, really notices, how bright and how red his hair his; almost, if not the actual, the color of freshly spilt blood.

"But I can assume that you've the money to pay." She saves herself from the embarrassment, "Pardon the intrusion."

"No," He stops her, and she takes note how his voice sounds commanding to a certain extent. She looks at him and sees aloof half-lidded eyes. "I wouldn't mind company."

And she wouldn't mind a bite of the food on his plate, but resists. She looks around and sees that the only available space for her is at the far corner and she isn't willing to walk away, knowing that he has already responded to her conversation. It would be rude to leave, wouldn't it? She thinks.

She takes a seat across from him and comments at his being alone, "Shinobi rarely go out alone." She knows that, from her time in the labyrinth, her mentor's spies rarely go out solo, and if they did, they wouldn't take long to return. "I'd ask why you're in Hagakure."

"Just passing through." He says. "I'm meeting my party in an inn outside the village and I'd like time to myself before that."

"Shinobi aren't allowed entry just because." She thinks he's lying. "You must be someone important, then."

She looks at him and tries to see through him.

"I keep to myself." He says with an almost smile.

"Just like a samurai." She smiles inwardly in response. "Tell me, shinobi, what brings you to Hagakure?"

"I'm looking for a man."

"What a coincidence." She is, too. "I just hope we aren't after the same person."

"I doubt that as well."

She wants to hope so. It would be terribly awkward if they were to meet and converse about who's going to take the reward for Okabe Atsumori's death. She hopes to the gods that they aren't after the same person. And if they were, she might as well eliminate him? No. She wouldn't be that reckless. If they were both after Okabe Atsumori, she would have to get to him before the shinobi does. Yes. She will get to Atsumori first, and she will do so tonight.

"The food is good, shinobi." She tells him for a goodbye. "You might as well try to enjoy it."

She will remember his face, his red, red hair, and his aura. If he is after Okabe Atsumori, he would have already found him dead.

The adrenaline feeling of her racing against this unknown shinobi makes the tips of her fingers tingle in anticipation. She would have him follow her, and she is sure of it.

She will win against him, and her achievement would make her closer to becoming something that her master would so desire.

* * *

/

* * *

He is twenty-four when he decides to follow her.

He curses himself.

His assumption that she would lead him to a potential candidate was true, and she has lead him to Okabe Atsumori himself.

But he curses himself for the reason that he has absent mindedly allowed himself the vulnerability of trusting her to be nothing more than an admirer of the man.

But she has broken his, and Atsumori's, assumptions that she is a mere woman by showing her mastery of the sword. She is strong and she is fast, and he considers making her a puppet.

He watches hers and Atsumori's duel from the trees and is impressed by her. In the aftermath of the battle, she has given Atsumori shallow cuts across his arms and chest, while she stands unharmed and unmarred. She is almost pristine, if not for the sweat and the feral grin on her face as she watches Atsumori kneel before her in defeat.

There is something provocative in her expression, he thinks, something desirous and cruel in the way her aura of power radiates across the clearing and into the trees. He can imagine the wanton desire swelling from her, and he thinks that they are the same in that extent.

She is passionate in her ferocity and it is almost the same as the passion he pours into his art.

Of course, he is better than her. He does not give in to the desires of the flesh the same way she invites herself into Atsumori's room with the seeming intent in sleeping with him.

But he is wrong. And he curses himself because of his error.

Though from afar her intentions seem to be addressed to sating the desires of the body, he does not hear her moan in pleasure, nor does he hear Atsumori cry in release. He doesn't want to imagine her moaning. He is better than that. He doesn't want to imagine what lecherous deeds she is doing to the man, but later discovers that she has done nothing sexual to him.

He curses himself, aloud this time, feeling his own pent-up frustration in the shaking of his hands.

Okabe Atsumori is dead and he is not responsible.

He finds Atsumori's body wrapped in the covers and bites his lips in order to prevent a scream of frustration. He could attempt to make Atsumori into a puppet, but the very fact that he hadn't met his end by his hand angers him. He considers going to Atsumori's killer, the woman he has foolishly allowed himself to be deceived, and he does.

He knows her room in right beside Atsumori's, but he cannot bring himself to converse with her, let alone be in the same room as her. Would he kill her on the spot? Attempt to forced her into submission and torture her? Cut her slowly to let her feel the frustration? What would he do?

Too late, because she opens the door and says,

"You're late."

And it shocks him, bothers him, that she is vulnerable and expecting him. Moreover, that she is complaining that he has made her wait.

He never makes people wait.

"You lied." She says. "You were after him and didn't even bother to stop me."

He doesn't enter and she doesn't welcome him.

"What's done is done." She talks to him casually, as if he has not intention to kill her. Does he have an intention to kill her? "You do what you want with him. I just wanted the money."

She walks back to he futon without so much as a glance.

"You—" He starts, "Allow yourself this vulnerability."

He wonders why.

"From the start, you were suspicious of me." It comes out as a question, not a statement. "And yet, you allowed yourself for me to follow."

"I never invited you to my kill, shinobi." She states blankly, eyeing the two sword beside her, "You followed and I let you. Crack in the armor. Fuck me for allowing that to happen. You think it was intentional? "

She scowls. He frowns.

"What would you want with him anyway?" She asks, "He's a samurai and he's done nothing but sell out our secrets to Kirigakure. Is he wanted elsewhere?"

He shakes his head.

"Then why come after him?"

He doesn't answer. He couldn't possibly tell her that he's looking for puppets, could he?

"You're welcome in here if you'd like. Makes conversation easier."

She has no idea of what he capable of doing, does she? But if she is allowing him the opportunity to be close to her, then it would mean that she is prepared should be take the offensive.

He allows himself inside and slides the door closed.

"I expected you to come sooner, you know." She says. "It makes the clean-up easier."

"What?" He thinks that she's seen through his disguise.

"If you're after him, after his body or whatever, you might as well take it before the innkeeper finds him." She says, "You have your reasons for tracking him all the way from wherever you came from and I have mine."

She raises a hand to him.

His eyes shift from her face to her face.

"Shikaku no Shikai." She says. "Mercenary just out to make a living."

"Ikeda Yomu." He replies, taking her hand and feeling the callousness of her skin, "Konoha shinobi out to do what's right."

He spins the perfect lie, and she falls for it.

"Well, Yomu-san." She stands up. "You'd best be on your way. Wouldn't want to keep you from doing business with the daimyo."

He stiffens. How did she—

"Of course." Suspicion settles in his belly and he decides to do as she says. "It was a pleasure to meet you."

"I share the same sentiment." She replies.

When she leaves, he takes his time in examining Atsumori's body. The man is heavy, but her strength is evident. She has broken Atsumori's neck and it will take him some time to repair him to a condition which he would prefer.

He watches Atsumori's blood drip to the floor and raises another hand equipped with a syringe filled with an embalming agent to stop the bloodflow and the journey of the body to post-mortem. He wouldn't want to work with a dry, brittle body. He puppets are only made of the best materials, after all.

When she reaches her own room, she thinks she has seen through his guise. He is not a normal shinobi, she thinks, not one that the likes of Hagakure would let go unnoticed. Konoha shinobi, in the few days that she has been in the village, are messengers, leaving as quick as they have arrived. If they arrived at the gate by morning, they would be leaving by sundown. He, however, she could have sworn that she has seen him perpetually everywhere.

Hiding in quiet corners of the several dojo, sitting atop high roofs, standing in the middle of empty alleys. He is like a ghost that haunts the streets in search for something. He is no ordinary shinobi. He manages to charm the townspeople into his bidding. She has noticed the way he talks with restaurant owners, innkeepers, mothers, and anyone else he comes across.

She comes to the conclusion, then, when she sees him in the inn's dining hall in the morning, that he is definitely no ordinary shinobi.

He is not a messenger. He is a spy.

"Ikeda Yomu." She tests his name in none louder than a whisper.

Upon hearing the faintest of words, he looks to the thin wall separating Atsumori's room and her's. He imagines her preparing for an attack, her blade's tip poised at the wall, ready to cut through the wood and into him. He finds it exhilarating, to some extent, the possibility of her charging at him with the ferocity she has expressed in her duel with Atsumori. She is strong, fast, he gives her that, but thinks she could better her skills with proper mentors.

She is ferocious, but she is reckless.

He has noticed how her kimono flies in the air as she attacks relentlessly, showing the pale and scarred skin of her legs, arms, even the bare expanse of her chest. She is not pristine, she is not perfect. She leaves herself open to attacks, bare skin under simple clothes and nothing more. He expects her to cut herself at her own arrogance, unknowingly get herself a cut on her shoulder or her thigh, but in the aftermath of the battle, there is none.

Her body remains unscarred, unmarred. The old wounds do not reopen and new ones do not appear on her skin.

And she looks, at least to him, invincible and unbreakable.

He wonders if he were to make a puppet out of her, the very idea of him turning her ferocity into sleek, deadly grace, he considers it.

And so he waits for her to come to him.

Atsumori, though lifeless and hollow, lies in wait as well.

He laughs bitterly.

She hears this, before moving closer to the open window. She leans out, a ready hand grasping the hilt of the sword. And suddenly he emerges from the open window of Atsumori's room, a quick blur of red hair and brown armor jumping down from the third story down to the dark alley.

"Shit." She curses before jumping down after him.

He runs at a quick, but careless pace. He almost trips over wooden boxes, sends a pile of mental clattering cross the street. He is making too much, attracting too much attention. He runs into one of the main streets, already bustling with people browsing the goods at the night market, and she hisses under her breath. He's going to make a scene.

Atsumori's body hands over his shoulder and it's a miracle that no one notices the blood dripping from it. She grimaces, grits her teeth before shouting: "The shinobi has killed one of our samurai!"

The crowd parts and reveals him standing with his back turned to her. Blood drips from Atsumori's open wound. His shoulders heave in a sigh before he turns to her with a smirk. The confident look on his face tells her that he's planned this, knows that she's going to do this—and so her determined expression falls.

A chorus of "After him!", "There he is!", and "Don't let him get away!" surround them before he bursts into a sprint, jumps high and begins running acorss rooftops.

She runs after him. Removes the hand on her sword and swings her arms back to run faster. She catches up to him before he could reach the gates of Hagakure. She leaps in front of him and he grinds to a halt some yards away from her. Thier breathing is accelerated; hearts beating so fast, hands steady on each of their weapons.

She holds Kunishige's whistling blade in a firm grip. He holds a kunai in one hand and Atsumori in the other. She smirks, knowing he has to drop Atsumori for him to fight effectively.

"You're quite perssitent." He commends, his hold on Atsumori not faltering. "I thought you had proof of his death already."

"What is your purpose here, Yomu-san?" She spits out. "Surely the Hakage has yet to speak with you."

As if on cue, a band of Hagakure guards come up from behind him, swords at the ready. He eyes his situation carefully, but doesn't panic—he's thought of this, after all.

"You've caught me." He says dismissively, dropping his kunai to the ground before carefully laying Atsumori down before him. He turns to the samurai behind him then, says, "My name is Ikeda Yomu. I was tasked by the Hokage to capture this man—dead or alive."

He knows that her eyes are widening at his words and her steady grip is shaking. He continues, "His name is Okabe Atsumori. He is a spy for Kirigakure. This woman behind me can attest to it." He steps to the side, throwing her a sly grin, knowing that she doesn't have a choice in the matter.

She eyes him dangerously beforing lowering her sword. "Yes. It is true." She replies curtly, "I have been trailing Okabe Atsumori for the past few weeks. He is a traitor of Hagakure."

"His bounty letter, if you please."

She unfolds the paper in her pocket and shows it to the samurai. They nod in agreement and put away their swords.

"Thank you, Issei-san." He says and she bites her lip—how dare he! "Now, if you would excuse me, I have a body to dispose of."

They watch the samurai disperse, her eyes boring into his back. He returns the discarded kunai to his pocket and picks up the Atsumori's body before speaking. "Now, what is your name?"

"You are not who you pretend to be, shinobi."

"Ah yes." He agrees. "I am Akasuna no Sasori."

"Shikaku no Shikai."

He lips form an upward curve and hers form a downward one. He proceeds to walk to the gate, and when he is almost past her, he whispers:

"May we meet again."

He sees her ball her firsts and her jaw stiffen, knowing full well that she could so easily attack him and steal back Atsumori but she wouldn't, not with how well she played into his plan. So she settles for a reply, in all the promise she could muster:

"I will break you."

He smirks as he approaches the gatekeepers. They repeat the same technique from his arrival, and he feels her steady gaze heavy on his back.


	6. years in-between

**Martyrdom is an Art**

A/N: Revisions galore.

* * *

 _"He thought he would break her, but he was the one who broke in the end."_

 _Akasuna no Sasori wanted to achieve immortality, not godhood._

* * *

She is seventeen and she is no longer alone in her master's gaze.

A few days after she returns from Hagakure, she is back inside the arena, tearing skin and breaking bone to sate her frustration and her anger. She battles against fugitives and prisoners of war, shinobi hailing from different countries and poised with different abilities, equipped with weapons she hasn't seen before.

She waits for the day she is put against a man with red hair and puppets as his arsenal.

But one day, her masters pits her against a pale-haired boy from Konohagakure, boasts of his ability in the Third Shinobi World War, tells her that he is his new student, herkouhai.

She seethes with jealousy at the thought of this boy having more legitimate experience than her, thinks of twisting the boy's arrogant smirk inside out-

She rushes with Yamenokayama without hesitation. The killing intent has kept her victorious over these meager battles, kept his praises of her whispered like malicious intentions as she is stitched up like a rag too useful to discard, yet too dirty to be praised.

She only wishes for him to boast about her to those colleagues of his in the surface, only wishes to be prized as a sword that has seen many battles, its blade chipped and stained, not a sword put on display, its blade shining but dull.

And when she is kicked away by her master for raising the blade against the boy, does she realize that she is no longer his solitary student, that she no longer holds his gaze firmly in her grasp. It seems her quest for an invincible body might not be achieved only through him, so she ventures out into the world, hoping to find immortality for herself.

* * *

/

* * *

He is twenty-three and he has yet to find her.

He returns to Hagakure a little later than he preferred, uses the same name, and a different mission.

"I'm looking for my accomplice from before." He asks the innkeeper of Akitame. "Her name is Shikaku no Shikai."

The innkeeper looks at him incredulously and posits him a question he did not expect: "Why? She ran out on you or something?"

Yes. "No. I wish to thank her." He gives the innkeeper his best smile.

But it doesn't charm him. "Then go to her family."

Her family? "Who are they? Where do they live?"

"The Amakuni compound." The innkeeper dismisses him. "You'll know it when you see it."

Later that day, he finds himself in front of the arch of the Amakuni compound, a large estate with several buildings in traditional architecture much like the rest of Hagakure. In the center, there is a courtyard so lush and vibrant with plants unlike the dry and dismal landscape of Sunagakure. He is approached by a man wearing an ocean blue hakama reminiscent of her yukata from before. Perhaps that is their clan's color?

"What is your task here, shinobi?" The forboding man asks him, his twin swords strung around his waist.

"I am looking for Shikaku no Shikai. I wish to thank her for assisting me in one of my missions here."

The man breathes deep before replying, "You were late. She had already left."

"Where could she have gone?"

"She is employed by your fellow shinobi, though I cannot recall his name."

"Is that so?" He feels jealousy surge within him. "You have my thanks. I shall take my leave."

The samurai looks at him critically, but shrugs and acknowledges his answer with a grunt. He thinks to himself then, if he would opt to wait for her without guarantee of when she will return, wait for her like a loyal mutt.

Why would he wait for her? Was she so important and delicate that he would choose to wait for her than to go and find her?

He hates waiting. He hates it just as much as making people wait.

Is she waiting for him? That was a question he needn't answer. Surely she wouldn't hesitate in drawing her sword against him. He is an enemy. Or would it be that she has already forgotten about him? Left town in order to escape his grasp completely?

He might hate waiting, but he wasn't one to give up the chase so easily.

"Surely," he tells himself, "She will be one of greatest I would have created."

And he imagines her made of unbreakable metal and sturdy wood, bloodlust permanent as the porcelain of her eyes.

* * *

/

* * *

She is eighteen when she seals the first sword into her soul.

At first it is a constant pain in her arm, a sharpness embedded under her skin that she cannot remedy. She picked up the technique at one of the hybrid schools in Hagakure, when a woman so much like her mother teaches sealing-type ninjutsu to young children. She watches them with earnest curiosity and a pang of envy, watches them seal into their bodies swords and shuriken or various sizes and numbers. They, too, will become like her, with bones made of iron and skin made of steel, but they have gotten ahead of her, with the youngest student barely at six years old and their oldest just past the age of fourteen.

She has to learn faster, learn better, seal more swords into her body than anyone in the class. The next few days are spent practicing the technique, sealing and unsealing swords into her body, no matter how she tires, no matter how the dull pain remains even long after she has removed the seal. She eats little and sleeps less. In her quest for immortality, she cares little for her health and more for her power.

"Sealing swords in your body won't make you invincible." The dojo's master tells her on the sixth night. "They're more of an inconvenience than anything. The more swords you seal, the more blood you waste."

He then tells her of how much of his blood he had to spill in order to retrieve all fifteen of the swords he had sealed into his body during his youth. They are not shinobi, and they cannot transform their chakra into illusory weapons, they seal actual weapons, heavy and sharp and real, into their bodies. It is a gruesome art, he tells her, but art has always been violent.

"I'm going to seal a hundred swords into my body." She tells him.

"And to allow yourself to carry such a burden is deadly. No god would even attempt such a feat." He replies and tells her to try sealing the swords into a scroll instead. That way she'll be light on her feet and easy on her soul.

She decides then, to seal into her body only the most powerful blade she would come across, and begins her journey in search of the mythical Murai.

The sword emerges from her stomach and falls to the ground in bloody clatter.

* * *

/

* * *

He is twenty-four when he murders the Third Kazekage.

It happens in Autumn, but Sunagakure was never a destination for those who appreciate the seasons. An arid desert year-round, he doesn't feel at all nostalgic when approaching the borders of his home with a different face, a puppet made to look like a bulwark, a fortress he lovingly calls Hiruko, crafted during his time travelling the nations in search for substitutes and replacements alike. However, he has not yet encountered her.

"No matter." He tells himself as he slips past the guards. "My prey is so much more powerful than her."

He has had his eyes set on the Third Kazekage ever since he bore witness to the might and versatility of his iron sand in the battlefield. Thinking of what he would be able to do, what chaos he would create when given such a gift. He knows how the Third Kazekage is aware of the power he holds in his palm, if not, he would just have to make him realize it.

"Good evening." He greets the unsuspecting body of the Third Kazekage, the leader who retired shortly after the Third Shinobi World War, forcing the burden of the years after the war upon his younger, less experienced relative.

"You—!"

He pierces the man's heart with Hiruko's iron tail.

"Traitor." The Third Kazekage mutters, fighting against the quick-acting toxin now flowing steadily into his veins.

"As much as you think I'd enjoy a battle with you, I'm afraid I'm on a tight schedule." He replies as he takes the Third Kazekage's body into Hiruko's shell. Kidnapping the Third Kazekage was easier than he thought. Rather, murdering and then kidnapping him.

He's going to be scolded by their leader for acting on his own again.

"No matter." He thinks. "I'd so easily make puppets out of all of them."

* * *

/

* * *

She is nineteen when she cuts the pale of his hand, skin of his chest.

In the nearly two years she was away, he realizes that she has become stronger, faster, with a precise grace in her movements so unlike the animalistic, bloodthirsty youth from before. One of the Hagakure bloodlines flows through her, and yet he no longer has interest in it. The Shuureigan does not hold him in awe as it had before, if not for his new-found desire to acquire a bloodline passed down from the gods themselves: the Sharingan.

"I think it best that I release you from my employment." He says to her a day after her return. "I have no more reason to keep you here."

Her eyes widen and her jaw locks in its place. She presses her lips into a tight line as she scrutinizes him.

"I have taught you all that I could, and you have learned all that I have given you." He continues, "But there are greater things in this world, and I wish to acquire them."

"Let me assist you." She says firmly.

"You have not yet acquired the vengeance you sought before." He states. "What will become of it should I allow you to?"

"It is the samurai's code that our master's desires be placed before our own. I will assist you in whatever you so seek, and then I will have my revenge."

He frowns then, for he could not understand how someone could so easily place others' desires before their own, how someone could be so selfless and yet not lose their own personal goals in mind. So he asks, "Why?"

"Because I am a samurai. I am unlike any of your shinobi." Her conviction is strong. "There are none like I whose loyalty cannot be shaken."

It is true. It is almost as if she were a dog on an infinite leash, free to roam as she pleases, and yet at the end of the day is still tied to a leash. She is not free, and yet she moves with the liberty that comes with acquiring his full trust.

Does he, now, have complete and utter trust in her that she would not turn against him?

He wishes to know the answer, so he agrees.

"Very well." He nods. "You may continue serving under me."

She bows deeply. "You have my gratitude."

* * *

/

* * *

He is twenty-five when he becomes acquainted with her mentor.

When he joined a mysterious man's quest for something bigger than himself, he explicitly stated that he worked better alone, that he only work alone. He would be slowed down otherwise, and so-called allies would only be a nuisance, unless they offered themselves to him as puppets, then he would have reconsidered. The anonymous leader of the Akatsuki, however, is not one to listen to his subordinates' complaints, and therefore partnered him with one that he thought might be a kindred spirit.

What the leader didn't know was that Akasuna no Sasori wasn't very appreciative of snakes.

"Kindred spirits," He scoffs, watching the pale man's summon swallow their target whole. He shudders at the sight of it. "Disgusting creature."

"What was that, Sasori-kun?" The man in question inquired deviously. At that moment, Sasori knew for certain that the leader partnered him with a literal snake.

"Nothing important." He replies, but gives to the man's persistent stare. "I was just wondering what you plan to do to their bodies, seeing as we've done the mission."

"Put them to good use." The snake replies. "Why? Were you thinking of doing the same?"

He isn't taken aback by such an offhand comment. He knows this man enough to no longer feel the need to ask why they were made partners by their leader. With both of them having a twisted sense of ambition to gain immortality through whatever means possible, he through his puppet body, and him through his…what does the man use?

"No." He says. "I was wondering how his body could be of use to you since it's dead and you couldn't really learn much from it."

The man is a doctor, well-learned in medicine and the human anatomy; a morbid track in life, but a track he rather respects and to some extent idolizes, as a human puppeteer he also has his fair share of knowledge about the human body, but not as much as his partner.

"Ah, but dead bodies are the most telling of them all." He smiles wickedly. "Come, I will show you something."

And he follows the pale-skinned man into an underground coven, not knowing what his intentions are, but hoping for a moment that they are aligned with his.

* * *

/

* * *

She is nineteen.

They meet again in the dim light of the snake's lair. The air is damp. The air is cold. She grits her teeth and sharpens her anger. He wonders if her blood is boiling at the sight of him.

"She is…a bodyguard." The mutual person, her mentor, his partner, introduces them to each other. "He is my partner in the Akatsuki."

"Good day." She says simply. She couldn't have forgotten him, could she? But she continues, "We have met before in Hagakure."

"A small world, isn't it?" His partner comments. "Shikai-kun. Would you like to show him what you are capable of now?"

"Yes."

He studies her blank face before turning to his partner, "What do you mean?"

"She has been eager to see you again." His partner laughs. "She had told me before of her intentions to fight you. I wonder if you would be impressed by her now."

He frowns, groans, says disdainfully, "Is this all for entertainment, Orochimaru?"

"Not even one bit." His partner replies. "This is all her."

So he watches her walk away from him, have her back turned to him and her hands still at her sides. She has changed, if a little. Her form no longer emanates the shadow of a ferocious beast, but now exudes the image of a sharped blade ready to kill. She cranes her head over her shoulder then, eyeing him critically before saying:

"Do not hold back."

Her words form a taunting echo that makes her master smirk and the man before her scowl. She turns to him completely before bowing deeply. He does the same and rises as she unsheathes the smaller blade—Yamenokayama—and steadies her posture.

He summons a minor puppet from his arsenal and waits for her first attack.

* * *

/

* * *

He is twenty-five.

She knows of him. In the two years that she has been away, she has heard of this group that recruited her mentor with the promise to grant him his dearest wish. She knows of its members, each and all of them notorious in their own right, each a formidable opponent, each with a large bounty on their heads, each of them with power that she can only strive to achieve.

One of them, the red-haired man from before, is in front of her with a puppet that looked like it could break in one strike. She scowls. He is underestimating her. It doesn't take too long before she sprints into a run with Yamenokayam poised to cut at his neck. He deflects the blade quick enough with the puppet's steel body.

An echoing rupture erupts from the clash of steel against steel.

She turns her heel and dashes above him, leaping high into the air with the blade poised downwards. Steel hits steel and she uses the puppet's body as leverage, pushing down on it with her feet in order to jump even higher.

And while she is in the air, he pulls at a string that unhinges the puppet's jaw, sends a fiery blast towards her.

"Shuureigan."

She commands, places her hand before the fire and watches as it disperses before her.

She lands unharmed and he pulls another string and opens the puppet's chest that sends a high-pressure torrent of water towards her.

She does the same movement and the water splatters the surrounding area around her.

He stares shocked at her sudden display before smirking to himself. "What a fascinating ability you have." He turns to his partner then, "So this is one of Hagakure's bloodlines?"

His partner nods. "An inavaluable skill."

"What do you plan to do with her?"

"She is the weapon that will assure my success."

He looks at her then and can't help but feel the slightest amount of pity. Surely her ability would be better if she were to be serving under him—be it alive or dead. She scowls then, she is not yet finished with him. She had promised to break him, but perhaps—she thinks—she might be able to do so another time.


	7. simple solutions and simple answers

**Martyrdom is an Art**

A/N: Revisions galore.

* * *

 _"He thought he would break her, but he was the one who broke in the end."_

 _Akasuna no Sasori wanted to achieve immortality, not godhood._

* * *

She is twenty when she begins training with him.

Months have passed and he notices her growing arsenal of blades.

"Souen: Senjin no Mai!"

Thirty-seven swords begin falling around her in a resounding clatter. The blades glimmer in the sunlight. A bead of sweat trickles down her arm. Her gaze doesn't falter. Her posture stiffens. There is silence.

"You are tired." He states bluntly. Her breathing is labored. She has used much of her chakra in that one technique already? In all the years she had been training with the Snake Sage, she would have learned how to use it properly. He frowns at the idea, if with him she would have learned much even in such a short time.

But isn't this why she was forcibly brought to him the first place?

"I have been assigned on a solo mission, Sasori-kun." He remembers the words of his partner, "Keep watch over her for me."

"But, master!" She had cried out defiantly.

"Hush now, you will learn much from him."

She turned to him then, and sent him a furious glare.

At first he had thought of how it would be the perfect opportunity to pull her away, to persuade her to come to his side, to bring to her the idea that she would be better with him. Unfortunately, her adamant mindset and unpleasant scowls have only proven to him her infatuation, or rather obsession, with the Snake Sage.

"You are wasting my time." He tells her the words he never thought he would say to her. She had called him out to assist in her training and he had hoped to see how vicious and how brutal her fighting style is in person, but she has disappointed him by stilling her movements upon summoning her collection of blades.

She grits her teeth and runs towards him at a blinding speed, the tip of the blade poised towards his neck. He expects the attack, and moves Hiruko's tail to block it.

But she jumps high and spins wildly in the air, and he cannot predict which way she will attack next, how she will attack next—

The blade breaks against Hiruko's tail, but she maneuvers and grabs the broken piece and throws it to Hiruko's face.

A shallow cut appears on the wooden cheek and it almost stings him. She lands on her feet, only to quickly throw the piece in her hand and deliver another cut to Hiruko's face parallel to the one before.

"Was that supposed to impress me?" He chuckles behind Hiruko's face and thanks that the mask betrays how he really feels. To think that she had accomplished the movement without using an ounce of what chakra she had left, she was moving on sheer physical stamina alone.

"I will break you." She mutters before quickly rolling away and picking up one, two blades from the ground and throwing them to him.

"Gedandzuki no Mai!"

Two more blades follow in quick succession, and then three, five, six, eight, until she has thrown all of her blades towards him—and he deflects them all, sending them spinning away and scattering about him. He had noticed how she handled the blades effortlessly, lifting them easily off the ground and throwing them as if they weighed nothing, and he almost has the urge to call upon the Sandaime Kazekage to see how she would approach a battle with one whose chakra nature would render her attacks useless. He watches her drop back to the ground without any hint of hesitation or breathlessness. Had she done all of those by relying on physical strength alone?

"Jiton: Itomenashi no Jutsu!"

She surprises him then, by showing him a technique so similar to his own. The swords around him begin levitating, hanging by her magnetic chakra, surrounding the immediate space above him with their blades pointed downwards—a dome-like structure of swords whose blades are pointed towards him, if you will.

"Kudake."

The blades fall simultaneously, lightly piercing Hiruko's shell and shallowly cutting the wood and steel structure that he had so meticulously made. He begins to be more impressed with her, if only a little, because the steel he used for Hiruko's tail are of higher, rarer quality than the cheap steel of her arsenal. She cannot break Hiruko. She cannot break him.

Or is she doing this on purpose?

"Do you toy with me?" He asks as he watches her place a steady hand on one of the swords from the daishō hanging from her waist.

"Kudashi Te: Gesshoku."

She delivers a quick iaido slash that creates a rupturing echo, a shrill scream that makes him clench his teeth and his fingers twitch. She takes the opportunity to move quickly, appearing suddenly behind him, blade poised to pierce through Hiruko's shell and into his head if Hiruko's tail hadn't met the attack in time.

She holds her ground and feels proud that the tip of Yamenokaya has managed to pierce through the thick wood halfway.

"We are done." He says and waits for her to sheathe her blades, waits for her summoned arsenal to disappear before completely letting his guard down. He keeps himself inside Hiruko's thick shell under the idea that she might very well decide to destroy him with her bare hands.

"When will he be back?" She says as the smoke clears.

"Later tonight, if I assume correctly."

She frowns. "And you are to keep me company?"

"As much as I dislike it." He lied.

She looks to the sky above them and huffs, expressing her distaste. "I hope the sunset comes quicker, then."

"As do I." He echoed.

The silence expands between them; the trees looming around the clearing rustle their leaves in the slight breeze, their trunks scarred and cut reminiscent of previous battles and sparring matches. Ever since they have been reintroduced to each other—him as a member of the Akatsuki and her mentor's partner, and she as his partner's student and ever-loyal vassal—they have sparred for fifteen times over the course of eight months, with him more often than not discontinuing their battle before she could pull her finishing move. She scowls at the thought, is he purposely holding back? Does he not find her a worthy opponent? Or is he simply hiding something more sinister? Gauge her abilities and finally end her in one strike?

"You were looking for me in Hagakure, why?" She inquires upon sudden remembrance of the thought, however long ago it was when she visited Hagakure and was approached by a samurai saying that a red-haired shinobi had been looking for her.

He hides his smirk behind Hiruko's face. "It seems I have been found out."

"What were you doing there in the first place?" She presses.

"I wished to thank you."

She knows he is lying. In the back of her head, she is sure that he wants to make a puppet out of her, kill her and make her body into the a tool he sees fit to use and him, she is nothing more than just another human being that would fulfill their potential in his hands, for what else is she but a weapon? Raised from birth to become a fighter, a master of the blades, and a weapon in the form of a human body. Easily becoming the victor of several death matches with nothing but her bare body and her chipped blades, surely becoming a puppet of his would allow her to become the perfect human weapon she would have sent her entire life training to be.

She would surely become perfect if she belonged to him.

It is his turn to ask, "Why do you remain with him?"

"Is there anywhere else I could be?" She retorts.

"You could be anywhere." He muses. "I hear Tetsu no Kuni is another one of the countries that employ samurai."

But he hasn't been to that country, hasn't seen the military strength of the samurai there, hasn't tasted the cold, cold weather, hasn't heard the prejudice against radical shinobi groups such as the Akatsuki…

She replies, "And you will be my enemy."

He asks with a cock of his head, "Am I not your enemy now?"

He is.

At least he should be.

"You are his partner. An ally." She spits out the last word. "If I regarded you an enemy, surely he will be displeased with me."

"And if does not care?" He presses.

She does not reply. Instead, she looks away from him, breathes in deep, and thinks. He takes the opportunity.

"You think I consider him an ally, but I would not hesitate to strike him down if he interferes with my art." He explains. "And I think he would do the same if I prevented him from whatever it is he wishes to do. We are not the allies you perceive in your head." He grounds out. "I will fight him if necessary, and I will win."

At least, he hopes to win. He hasn't seen the Snake Sage's complete arsenal, hasn't seen the full extent of his capabilities, hasn't seen through him enough to calculate his weak points.

"You forget that I am here." She mutters. "I will stop you."

She doesn't say kill.

"Of course." He smirks. "With an arsenal of blades so easily broken, I wonder how you would even win against me."

She clenches her teeth as she remembers the scene, the sound of steel breaking apart against steel, the sight of a crafted sword being rendered useless by a shinobi's weapon. It is only one sword, she thinks, and it was old, having gone through several battles its blade has chipped and only time could tell when it would reach its breaking point.

Time.

Did that mean that her arsenal would slowly diminish? That the swords will keep on breaking? No. No. She would gather more swords. Gather more. Until she has a hundred. A thousand!

"Those blades aren't yours, you know." He calls her out of her thoughts. "They aren't built for you."

In his mind she is a thief, taking the weapons of those who have fallen by her hand. It is out of convenience that she take their swords, and it is out of desperation that she take as many as she could just to have an arsenal that could only dream of rivalling his. He knows of her determination to become something that would earn her his partner's devotion, to become something worthy of a twisted affection she believes could only come from the Snake Sage.

"I recall your father was a swordsmith." He tells her. She looks shocked at his statement, but he recovers with a quick, "And your mother was a swordsman. He told me from before we met."

He had forgotten about her brother.

She had also forgotten one of her reasons to become stronger.

She clenches her fists tight. It has been five years since she last saw her brother and she wonders how he is doing, where he is living, who are his adoptive parents, if he is still practicing his art, if he is still alive—

"You should craft your own blades." He says. "You should hone your own art."

That much is true for him, as puppeteer and as a puppet maker. In his belief that he will not only be immortal, but be revered as a god, is materialized in his work. Every puppet in his collection is entirely his own, the bodies made wholly and utterly his, their talents brought to the highest level, their skills honed to the sharpest point. Surely, in his mind, he is a god who has allowed these members of his collection to reach perfection.

He remembers how his mouth had dried at the sight of her coming back to life the second time he has met her.

"He rarely lets me visit Hagakure for more than few days at a time." She replies, not looking at him, and he could imagine a childish pout on her face. "I would need at least half a year or so."

Had she not learned of crafting swords in her time there? He knows she has spent two years away from the Snake Sage, but why hasn't she thought of learning to craft? Had the idea come to her only now that he has told her?

He denies himself the selfish joy that comes with the fact.

"Do you…" She hesitates. "Do you craft their blades?"

"Of course." He replies swiftly and nonchalantly.

Her next words do not falter, and she returns her stoic gaze to him. "Then, would you consider teaching me?"

"I would."

She turns to him fully and bows deep from her waist out of respect. Although it pains her to even come to him of all people, the man who at first wanted nothing but to kill her, the man who had searched Hagakure for her, the man who had been unfazed by her attacks, the man whose body is of wood and steel and poison and of the unchanging face of a boy, she shrinks her pride out of desperation and wishes that she learn fast enough.

She so badly wants to prove her strength over him.

* * *

/

* * *

He is twenty-six when he likens her to him.

An unsharpened steel blade is thrown to the wall and a loud clang resounds in the otherwise empty room. On the same side, there is a pile of unfinished, unsharpened, broken blades, and on the other side is a furious young woman sweating against the heat of the forge.

"You are not teaching me fast enough." She huffs. Her hands are thoroughly roughened by the endless attempts at crafting the perfect sword that is light, yet sharp and strong enough to cut cleanly through skin and bone.

"Be patient." He hisses.

He had told her it was impossible. She would have to sacrifice strength with sharpness, weight with durability. His puppets aren't so lightweight as he makes them appear to be, they are, after all, complete arsenals with retractable blades, poisoned needles, jagged iron, teeth, study wood, porcelain eyes, and human chakra.

And for a moment he wonders how she would weigh, and what weapons he would make into her already invincible body.

"Keep up with me." She cocks her head to the side and begins pounding the hammer into a new blade, and begins again the routine: dip the steel in cold water, douse it in the fire, and repeat; fold the steel again and again and again until she could see the ocean ripples upon its surface.

"I meant the blade." She grounds. "But it could also mean you."

"Pardon?"

"I am not a child." She drops the steel into the fire without little remorse. "Do not teach me as if I am one."

He rolls his eyes at the statement. How childish she still is, he thinks.

"How long has it been?" She picks up the blade and begins pounding the hammer upon it again. "Two, three weeks?" She spits out as she douses the hot blade in cold water, hearing the furious sizzle it makes. "And you haven't given me anything worth showing to him."

"How childish your sentiment is." He tells her and she stops working, stills her hands and breathes deeply. He continues, "You think I would teach you to impress him? You think I am doing this for him? How more of a child could you be?"

Her lower lip quivers from her anger. He had said nothing but petty remarks and loose insults to her, and she think he is provoking her on purpose, riling her up to get what he wants like what a child would do to its mother, and if he is, then what does he want from her? What could he want from her?

She already knows the answer to the question, but refuses to give him the satisfaction.

"What you are making is art." He states firmly. "And art should never be rushed."

If art were her profession, surely he would be her senior. How old was he when he first created puppets? First toyed with wooden dolls and figurines? How old was he when he realized that this is what he was meant to become?

"Your swordsmanship should be treated as an art, as well." He continued. "It has much potential to become graceful and deadly, but so far all I have seen is that it is still rough and unfinished. How much time did you spend on actually sharpening your skill?"

His words hit her like salt to a wound and forces her to think. She had learned the essentials of swordsmanship from her mother at the early age of six. She wielded a sword at the age of ten. She learned to combine her chakra with her attacks at the age of fifteen. She became a bounty hunter at the age of seventeen. She had returned to Hagakure to learn a hybrid form of combining ninjutsu with kenjutsu at the age of eighteen. She had formed her own techniques of the sword at the age of nineteen. At now at age twenty, what has she become? Surely her skills are superior to any and every one she has faced. But what about those that she hadn't? Are there any who are better than her?

She wishes the thought would perish, but it lingers in her mind.

"I could only assume that you have spent your time in the world gathering as many swords and creating as many techniques as you can." He says distastefully. "But the artist values quality over quantity."

It snaps her out of her thoughts.

"You speak as if I am like you." She finally spoke. "A craftsman."

"An artist." He narrows his eyes as her term.

"Which I am not." She huffs. "I am a killer." A murderer. A weapon. A body of steel-skin and iron-bone.

"A killer as much as you are an artist." He adds, hiding the hope in his voice with a sardonic tone.

"Do not mock me, puppeteer." She doesn't call him by name. "My hands are capable of ripping you limb from limb."

He decides to test her. "Have you tried?"

"He will not be pleased with me."

She answers so simply, as if it were that obvious an answer to any question he could ask her and it infuriates him.

"You think it is always about him?" He growls. "Always, always about that vile man? Do you think of nothing else but him?"

"How could I?" She returns with the same simplistic tone. "He made me into what I am. It is because of him that I have become a weapon. Because of him, I am invincible."

It is an automatic answer, but a true answer however narrow and simplistic it may sound. He is further infuriated at how calm she is despite his attempts to rile her.

"Then you will be nothing to him but a weapon." He concludes. "He does, after all, have a new student who seems to have more promise than you."

The unfinished sword hits the wall beside his head. He turns his head to the wall and sees a crack.

"You are furious at mere mention of the younger one, it seems." He smirks. "How so? Does he adore him much more than you? Devote much of his time in training him? Spend much more of his travels than he does with you?"

The hammer hits the opposite side and leaves a crack as well.

He walks towards her and stops short of a few feet from her. "You are his weapon." He states. "You will always be his weapon, never a companion."

She grabs him by the neck and throws him to the ground, quickly following by digging a knee to his chest and pressing her other into the space between his torso and his arm. A hand is latched onto his neck, fingers digging into the sides of his throat, sharp nails biting into his skin. It surprises him how mere words could garner such a passionate reaction from her; he smirks. He sees her face contort into one showing disgust and fury, sees her grit her teeth and narrow her eyes.

"And what would I be to you?" She spats. "Wouldn't I be the same thing?"

It amuses him how afraid she is as she said those words, but he replies with, "You would be something better." He says, watching her eyes. "You would be like me."

He notices how she flinches at the statement, the miniscule shudder in her hands, the growing fear behind her furious gaze, and continues, "Immortal and invincible." He promises. "The perfect human weapon. The ideal companion for one such as I."

She knows his puppet body is a weapon of its own, organs replaced with machinations and poison, bones replaced with iron, skin replaced with wood, heart and mind replaced with narcissism and insanity…Would he do the same to her, then?

"But as you have said so yourself, you are already a weapon, mechanized and automated to kill and be victorious over any who dare face you." She could see the increasing derangement in his eyes, sees his pupils dilate ever so slightly. "I wouldn't need to kill you to own you." He whispers, a dark promise lurking behind his words and it terrifies her that she allowed him the opportunity to say such things.

"And what would you do, then?" Her voice doesn't betray her, but the slight loosening of her hands around his throat is evidence enough of her uneasy feeling.

"You would dare ask such a question?" His smirk widens, but her seemingly cold gaze holds firm. "It is simple enough. You would only need to be desperate enough to come to me of your own will. As you have now."

That is when she pulls away and throws him back with much force that sends him skidding across the floor.

She stands over him and hisses, "I will never be anything like you."

But the fear in her eyes betray her furious demeanor. She is scared because they both know she is quietly becoming like him, slowly becoming his own.

The next day, he hears news of her departure from his partner.

"She has gone to the island of Shizoku to train under a swordsmith who is a contemporary of her late father." The Snake Sage tells him. "I wonder where she got the idea." He cranes his neck to look at his partner, a vile smirk gracing his mouth.

"And you allowed her? Have you no idea of the possibility of a betrayal? Her roots lie with the ranks of the samurai. She would without a doubt leak information if given the opportunity to—"

"You speak of her with such familiarity, Sasori-kun." The snake grins. "But her ties lie with me now, and she would never dare to cross me."

"I wonder how long she will be gone." He mutters.

"She learns fast. She will return soon enough." It is a promise, almost. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason." He replies quickly. "I only wonder how you could allow someone such freedom to do as they please."

His partner laughs at the statement. "You should know, Sasori-kun, that her freedom is her prison cell."

The days pass, and he considers planting spies in Shizoku just to see how she is doing.

* * *

Translations:

Souen: Senjin no Mai - Manipulation Performance: Dance of a Thousand Blades

Gedandzuki no Mai - Mist Cutting Moon Dance

Jiton: Itomenashi no Jutsu - Magnet release: Weightless Thread Technique

kudake - "crush"

daishō - "big little" a term for a matched pair of swords worn by the samurai; usually a katana and a wakizashi, in Shikai's case Kunishige and Yamenokayama

Kudashi Te: Gesshoku - Finishing Move: Lunar Eclipse


	8. reveal to me, revel in me

**Martyrdom is an Art**

A/N: Revisions galore.

* * *

 _"He thought he would break her, but he was the one who broke in the end."_

 _Akasuna no Sasori wanted to achieve immortality, not godhood._

* * *

She is twenty-two when he discovers her strength.

She returns with a larger arsenal and a sharper face.

There is a new blade in her collection, several others in fact, but the blade she presents to him makes all the others pale in comparison.

"Murai."She has named the sword in her hand.

Her arsenal hangs around them in the desolate valley, hanging ominously through masterful control of her magnetic chakra. If it has taken her two years to master control over such an unpredictable chakra nature, along with learning to art of crafting weapons, then call him impressed. Her determination is like his, almost. Murai's blade shines in the sunlight and she looks at it with prideful admiration.

"I take it that's not the mythical weapon?" He asks.

She frowns, the corners of her mouth dipping slightly. "I would have spent my entire life searching for it." Her reasons for seeking immortality do not allude him, though he wishes she were a little bit more ambitious.

"And so you seek to become invincible, just so you could scour the world for a piece of metal that might not even exist."

She turns her head to him completely, seeking an apology in the bitter arrogance in his eyes. "And you?" She threatens, "What makes immortality so appealing to you?" She asks a question she already ought to know the answer to.

"To create art that transcends the human life." He says as if it were the easiest thing in the world. "Why else would one seek eternity?"

She is silent as she sheathes Murai into its scabbard.

"You." He continues. "You seek immortality for such trivial reasons. A waste of eternity."

He watches the swords surrounding them shake, if only a little; her control must be faltering. How interesting, he thinks, is her control reliant on her emotions?

"The mythical sword you speak of, what have you heard of it?" He presses. "Who wields it? Where was it last seen? You do not even know its appearance, do you?"

He thought she would mature in the two years she was away, remove all that childish frustration in her system and replace it with precise calmness, then she would liken to him, she would be closer to his ideal vision of her. The swords floating around them halt to a chilling stillness. A gentle breeze comes between them, but the swords are not affected by it. She turns to him completely, hands still at her sides. She breathe evenly before speaking.

"No." She admits. "I do not. But I am sure of one thing." She smirks. "Steel lasts longer than wood. All your puppets will decay, but my blades will not even rust. If you would seek forever in that wooden body, then even a broken blade will outlive you to see a thousand more years."

The calm, doubtless tone of her voice is what angers him, but he refuses to be moved by her words. Instead, he offers her a smirk of his own.

"You surprise me." He says, stepping forward. "In the time you were away, I wouldn't think you would be able to muster the courage to say such things about my art."

"Fuck your art." She hisses. "You didn't call me out here to talk."

"Right." He chuckles. "I called you out here to berate you and your lack of talent." He says sarcastically. "You've been absent for the past two years and I would like to see if you've become any better."

"That it?" She scoffs. "You don't know what you're asking for."

"My partner, he has taken a liking to the younger one. He's training him in medical ninjutsu." His smirk returns, "And, as I recall, you seem to lack the aptitude for it, correct?"

"You're riling me on purpose." She states. "I am going to break you."

She had promised him that so many times that it's more like a signal. The swords around them drop to the ground, their blades digging into the soil, forming a macabre fence of weapons at her, and possibly even his, disposal. Murai disappears from her grasp, and she unsheathes the smaller blade at her hip, the wakizashi, Yamenokaya. She slides a foot backward and steadies her posture. The electric energy of the blade sparks in her grasp.

"I look forward to your attempt." He reveals a scroll from his sleeve. "Nobumori."

A single puppet appears in front of him; it is the puppet body of Sugimori Nobumori, a face of fear permanent in his wooden visage. Clothed in a tattered, deep red cloak, the ominous puppet shrinks in comparison to the collection of blades surround them. He is underestimating her, she thinks. Does he find her unworthy of facing his army?

"He is one of my favorites." He says, opening Nobumori's mouth, where the sickle end of a kusarigama has replaced his tongue, "He's exactly what you want to be, is he not? A body whose human parts have been replaced by adamant steel."

He gives her that much of a warning before sending Nobumori towards her, its mouth open. She evades the incoming attack and deflects the kusarigama with her blade just before it hits, grabbing the chain with her hand and pulling it taught. Nobumori hangs between them in a tense, dangerous position of tug-of-war. She pulls against the strain, determined to pull apart the puppet one piece at a time.

"Nebiki no Kadomatsu." He says, and Nobumori falls apart immediately. She stumbles to regain her footing at the recoil. He takes the opportunity to attack, sending the ball end of the kusarigama towards her.

To his surprise, she catches the ball in her hand and pulls the kusarigama towards her. She springs forward, the kusarigama in one hand and the wakizashi in the other. It seems she has learned more than just swordsmithing in her time away. He meets her attack by pulling Nobumori's chest, a steel plate, in front of him. She shifts her footing, moves to his side and poises the kusarigama to attack.

He tugs on a string, and the sickle clashes with a dagger from Nobumori's arm. But she is quick, and raises the wakizashi to cut across the wooden limb. He hadn't anticipated her speed, and so Nobumori looses use of his left arm.

He moves Nobumori's chest to his side, blocking her next attack, a straight cut to his abdomen, and jumps a good distance away. But she follows him, jumping upwards past the steel plate and spinning the kusarigama in her hand. She throws the sickle towards him and he deflects the incoming blade with a spiked club, Nobumori's right arm. She follows the kusarigama right after, her arms poised to deliver a downwards cut to his head. He pulls the steel plate to defend him right before her attack connects.

The sound of steel against steel rings loudly in his ears. He anticipates her next attack, but she pulls back, jumps away and watches him.

"If that is what you think I want to be, then how weak do you think I am?" She says dismissively. "And here I thought I could pit my collection against yours." She frowns mockingly.

"You have not yet earned it." He replies, keeping his calm façade. "It would a waste of my time."

"Then I'll settle for him." She concludes, pointing the blade to Nobumori's head. "Put him back together." She commands.

"Only for you to tear him apart?" He comments dryly before he pulls Nobumori back together in a quick flourish of his hands, quietly annoyed at the sight of the puppet's left arm discarded on the ground. No matter, he thinks, Nobumori has more surprises for you.

"Let me have my fun." She laughs to herself, feeling confident, waiting for him to move.

Seconds pass. She grows impatient. Same as him.

"Kouton: Gekkou no Yoroi." She says before he feels a strong burst of chakra from her.

He watches her skin become enveloped by a luster of shining silver. This is the first time he is able to witness the steel release he had heard about in criminal circles. To have the ability to transforms one's skin into a material that is impervious to nearly all damage… It is one of the skills he lusts for.

"Kouton." He says under his breath. "So this is what it looks like?" He smirks, readying Nobumori, "Senrigatake." He commands.

Nobumori's steel chest cracks open and a barrage of wooden spikes burst out. She raises a hand that shatters the first spike upon contact before beginning her slow, arrogant assault, letting the wooden spikes shatter and break against her. The next barrage comes and she is unfazed. His interest in the steel release is even heightened by her display of total indifference towards the attack. The final barrage begins and he notices the tears and cuts already on her clothes, sees the unmarred skin beneath them.

He almost wonders how many scars she would have if not for her bloodline, how many cuts and bruises her body would sustain, how many fights she would have lost if weren't for the blood in her veins.

"Shishigajō." He says right after the last spike shoots out. Nobumori's mouth opens wide and a large torrent of fire shoots out, covering her in bright flames. He anticipates her to jump out of the way and attack him from above, but she doesn't.

She merely raises both of her palms in front of her to meet the flame, which splits into two at the contact. He is largely impressed by this, but refuses to show it.

The fire ends and he sees her hands unburned. He offers her a compliment, "It seems you've become stronger." He smiles. "Was that all?"

Her only reply is a vicious grin as she unsheathes Kunishige from her waist. If he were human still, he would have shivered in fear. Would she be stronger than him now? What is her next move? He anticipates every possible thing she could do, calculates how long is would take for her to reach for any blade and cut him, thinks about the possibility of her actually winning this fight.

She unsheathes Kunishige and the blade sings in the air, whistling in the breeze.

"Don't keep me waiting."

In that moment, he could almost say that she's already won.

But stubborn as he is, he refuses to acknowledge the idea. Wanting to end their bout as quickly and as effortlessly as he can, he pulls out Nobumori's trump card.

"Kuchiyose: Kyūsen No Yama."

Nine puppets appear in front of him, their bodies made from both real people and Nobumori's original arsenal. She recognizes one of the puppets immediately.

"Atsumori." She mutters under his breath upon sight of the samurai whose hands were replaced by blades. "So that is what you had planned for me after all."

There is the slightest tremor in her voice, the faintest sight of terror in her eyes. She is still human after all, she can still be afraid.

"Not so." He counters. "What I plan for you is something grander."

It doesn't surprise him that Atsumori is the first puppet she demolishes.

She had moved quickly, catching him off-guard as she pounces and cuts the blade of Kunishige across the abdomen of puppet Atsumori, turning even quicker to deliver a hard kick that dismantles the head from its shoulders, and an even harder fist that shatters puppet's torso.

And he had watched it all with calm, careful eyes. Her anger is what fuels her, her rage is her power.

"And if that was I could be in your hands." She warns, "This is what you'd be in mine."

He takes her word for it, and sends the eight remaining puppets to attack her simultaneously; watching her move smoothly from one to the other, watching her rage manifest in the form of frenzied strokes and furious kicks, punches, watching her animalistic brutality unfold before him, watching her dismantle, disfigure, decimate, and outright destroy the eight puppets with her bare hands.

And when she is done, she is heaving, surrounded by splinters and broken parts, shattered limbs and empty heads. The swords surrounding them go unnoticed, she discovers, and makes a laugh at it.

"It seems I'm the one who wasted time." She says. "Any more?"

He sends Nobumori as a final attack, and she breaks him all the same. She gives a relieved sigh as the puppet body falls to the ground. That is her testament to victory, her first victory over him.

"Good." Was all he could say. "I was having difficulty discarding those broken things, but you've done it for me. I suppose your victory could count as my thanks."

Nobumori had always been broken, he knows, his limbs always needing to be oiled, the mechanism in his mouth often failing, the steel plate of his chest refusing to shut perfectly. The other nine had similar problems, and he hasn't the time to tend to mediocre pieces of work. He had waited for the longest time to find the motivation to discard them, and her return and acceptance of his request was the perfect opportunity.

"You have my thanks." He says mockingly. "You managed to defeat broken puppets. How wonderful." He smirks deviously.

Kunishige whistles as it flies past his ear.

"And you would be a true artist if they weren't broken in the first place." She replied.

And he resists the urge to cut her open right then and there.

* * *

/

* * *

He is twenty-eight when she realizes his weakness.

The next time he sees her, it is in Sawa no Kuni some days after their bout. The country is a fertile marshland with thick trees and deep rivers cutting across the landscape. He is to meet with his partner, and their rendezvous point is an old inn by the main waterway. He is sitting on the futon in the room, his cloak folded neatly beside him as his hands begin to work on his puppet body. He examines himself thoroughly, seeing what else could be improved, what more could be added, how else he could be made better.

He ignores the sound of the door sliding open, but hears the sound of her voice.

"Orochimaru-sama will be late. He is attending to other matters." She says without greeting.

"He always is." He says under his breath.

He is facing away from her as he tinkers with his body, disinterested in her presence, but she doesn't leave.

"Really?" She asks, prompting conversation.

"Yes." His monosyllabic answer is definitive. This is a conversation neither of them wanted. It would have been so much better if she settled for silence, or discussing something other than his partner.

She settles on the floor and he hears the sound of a sword in its scabbard. He turns slightly to look at her from the corner of his eye. She has placed the two swords in front of her, unsheathing Yamenokayama and examining its blade for any chips or nicks. She traces the outline of the blade, testing its sharpness. He seems a similarity between them in this moment, but looks away and returns to his own body before he admits the fact.

He doesn't realize that this is the first time she has seen his puppet body exposed and wonders what she thinks of it.

"I wonder if I could do the same as you." She says suddenly, but he doesn't turn towards her, "If I could so easily discard broken swords."

"They're two completely different things." He replies. "My puppets were once human. Yours were never to begin with." He ponders on the difference for a moment before saying, "Swords are made to last the entirety of a warrior's life; dull blades are sharpened, sharp blades are sharpened even more. Puppets are of a different story, once they're finished there's nothing more to add to them."

"So there's the difference." She thinks aloud. "But why throw them away when you can fix them?"

He doesn't tell her that he lacks the time, instead;

"There was nothing else I could do." He confesses. "An artist like myself could only do his best."

And his best requires time, time that seems to elude his grasp.

"But you can fix them." She presses. "Like what you are doing now."

"This is my body." He defends. "Of course I take great measures in ensuring my body's perfection."

"But they could have gone through the same thing."

He scowls at her suggestion, thinks of how narrow-minded she is, thinks of how she little she knows about true art.

"If I were to become a puppet." She chooses her words carefully, "I would be like them, wouldn't I? You'd discard me so easily, won't you?"

He stops his hands and turns his head to look at her, trying to see if that is what she fears, if that is indication of her submission to him, but he sees her forlorn gaze cast downwards at the swords in front of her. He removes his eyes from her, turning his head away.

He only knows one answer to her question.

"You would be like me." He says, as he has done so before. "You would have a body like mine."

He lowers his hands to the side and thinks whether to show her the artificial heart on his chest, but she intercepts him. She stands and holds Yamenokayama in one hand before going to him.

"A body like yours could only have one weakness." She says and she holds the sword's tip to the symbol on his chest. There is a gentle tone in her voice, a vulnerable edge that piques his curiosity. He looks up at her to see whether a killing intent is there. He finds none.

And she stands over him in the silence, her hold on the sword as steady as her eyes are on the symbol on his chest.

"Why keep the heart at such an obvious, vulnerable place?" She asks under her breath as she lowers the blade.

"It is a foul reminder." He says, "That I was once human, once an imperfect, decaying being."

She goes to the window across him and looks out into the marshlands. She smiles bitterly.

"What a way to remind yourself." She sneers. "You're going to give me a heart, too?"

"Why do you ask?" He questions her tentatively.

He wants to believe that she had been thinking about his proposition the entire time she was away, that she had been brought to an epiphany when they had commemorated her return in a battle where he had granted her victory, that she is asking him such questions now because she is closer to submitting to him than she realizes.

He smiles inwardly at the thought, thankful that she has her back to him else she might ask.

"He is unsatisfied with me." She reveals. "And I understand why."

Then would she…? His thoughts get the best of him.

"I was made invincible to become his protector." She continued. "It is true, that I could choose to be anywhere I wanted."

He doesn't see the bitter expression on her face.

"A companion." She drawls out. "That is what you had said before."

"Yes." He confirms quietly.

"For what? Aren't the rest of your creations enough?" She turns to him there, and is surprised to see his bare face without a snide grin or confident smirk.

"They are tools to meet an end." He meets her eyes.

"And what would that end be?" She questions him further.

"Eternity."

The silence that follows is uncomfortable. She stalks back to her previous position and sits back down, sheathing Yamenokayama and moving to inspect Kunishige. She had barely heard or saw him move, but the closeness of his voice startles her.

"I keep to my word." He is behind her now, sitting on his ankles with his palms pressed against his knees. "You will be a companion, and you will be given a body like mine, but stronger. A true work of art."

She feels all the more reason to leave immediately and regret ever making such conversation with him, but instead she asks, "Why would go at such lengths to achieve immortality?"

"Art is the only thing worthy of such."

He reaches out a hand to touch her back, placing the wooden hand tentatively where her heart should be. She stills at his touch and feels the cold wood of his hand against her back.

"Why make art? Why the need to be remembered?"

He smiles this time, and places his hand firmly on her back, thinks about thrusting a blade into her unsuspecting body, cutting right through her lungs, saving her heart, giving her an easy death and get the entire ordeal over with.

"Your father was a swordsmith. Your mother was a teacher. Soon, their legacies will dry out and there will be noting left of them. His swords will be left to history and her students will sooner forget, but you will live on. You will be remembered for all time."

His words go around her head, luring her in.

"As yours." She frowns,

"As mine." His grin widens.

"And when there is someone better…" She posits. "What then?"

He doesn't answer.

"See?" She sheathes Kunishige and stands quickly, returning the two swords in her belt. "You're just like him. Wouldn't know what to with the old come the new."

He rises with her. "Don't you dare compare myself to that snake."

"What then?" She turned to him, and only now does he realize that she is a taller than him as she looks him down. "You're both monsters seeking to become gods."

"And what would that make you?" He sneers, a mocking laugh bubbling from his throat. "A woman seeking what? Recognition?"

She doesn't want to admit that she had only sought immortality to become her mentor's partner, but he says it for her.

"He no longer needs you." He grounds out. "How childish of you to still believe in that. To become invincible, that is what you seek, is it not?" He jeers. "If I tell you that you already are invincible, would you still pursue it?"

"I don't know." She says under her breath, thinking that if she already were invincible, wouldn't that be enough?

He is silent as she turns away to leave. She has never exposed herself to him before, and he still wonders why she had chosen this time to do so, wonders why she had done it in the first place. Has she committed a mistake? Does she regret coming here?

"Are you afraid to die?" He asks lowly, wanting to know her answer to a question that has haunted him for years. Is he afraid of death? Is dying his ultimate fear?

"No." She answers simply.

"Then what you are is enough." He says. "Why ask me all of these questions?"

"I had hoped to see from another perspective." She replies before sliding the door open. She looks at him a final time before saying. "One that appreciates me." She gives him a small smile before she leaves.

He is awestruck at her statement, finds no reason for her to do such a thing other than to seek reassurance. But him, of all people? Is he the only one who truly appreciates her? The only one who finds time for her childish rants? The only one she could begin to trust when questioning herself?

His plan to persuade her might be easier than he thought.

* * *

Translations:

Nebiki no Kadomatsu - The Uprooted Pine (an actual play written by Chikamatsu)

Kouton: Gekkou no Yoroi - Steel release: Armor of the Sparkling Moon

Senrigatake - Bamboo Forest of a Thousand Leagues (a place in one of Chikamatsu's plays, The Battles of Coxinga)

Shishigajō - Castle of Lions (another place in one of Chikamatsu's plays, The Battles of Coxinga)

Kuchiyose: Kyūsen No Yama - Summoning: Mountain of the Nine Immortals (another place in one of Chikamatsu's plays, The Battles of Coxinga)


	9. wood and steel

**Martyrdom is an Art**

A/N: Missed me? This is shorter than I had wanted, but I hope it's enough.

If any of you are familiar with _Love-in-idleness_ , it is a sequel of sorts to this story. I would very much appreciate it if you would read that work as well.

As such, these two works will be undergoing reconstruction (and spell and grammar editing!):

For _Martyrdom is an Art_ (which will be changed to _The Killer and The Artist_ ): Shikai's history up until she is seventeen years old (because I honestly have come to find it so dubious and lacking that she began where she did). One of the major changes, (spoiler?) her parents aren't dead.

For both of these works, Hagakure will now be called **Yūkō no Sato** (Deep and Quiet Bamboo Grove Village; in short, Silent Bamboo Grove Village), and Ken no Kuni will now be known as **Takamura no Kuni** (Bamboo Grove Country) because it is inhabited by samurai, and is not a shinobi country (and because it sounds better, tbh).

This update will be featuring these changes, and come the next update (which would likely be in November), the rest of the already published chapters will be updated for consistency, grammar, and spelling as well.

Onto the story, folks!

* * *

 _He thought to break her, but he was the one who broke in the end._

 _Akasuna no Sasori want to achieve immortality, not godhood._

* * *

She is twenty-three when she leaves him.

A few months pass before he is able to hold a conversation with her again. Sure, he has heard of her from Orochimaru, who spoke of her improving ability and her unquestioning loyalty, her growing collection of blades and her increasing proficiency in the use of other weapons. She seeks to amass skills in weaponry, in craftsmanship; earn praise from Orochimaru himself, and likely earn a name worthy of being published in the Book. He, however, thinks her to be unbefitting to be listed with international criminals and masterminds.

She is just a soldier, after all, a samurai merely carrying out orders.

So it comes as no surprise to him that she is acting as a messenger for Orochimaru the next time he sees her.

Yama no Kuni is a land surrounded by high mountains hiding treacherous depths and mysterious caves. Their mission was to search for remnants of Kagerou no Sato's master trap-makers if there were any. Four days into the mission and they've found that members of the Fujikawa clan of the fallen Kagerou no Sato still reside within the region.

In an old inn on the outskirts of the forgotten village, she appears in front of them, hakama and kimono thoroughly dirtied as if she has crawled out of a muddy pit.

And she has.

The moist dirt on her face is a sign that she had escaped the pit just moments before she had come to them.

It's no wonder she survived.

"There are people residing northeast of here. They have introduced themselves as members of the Fujikawa clan." She reports dutifully, presenting a map filled marking the Fujikawa clan's hideout and the traps laid by them.

Orochimaru takes the map and comments, "The Fujikawa clan were a family of trap-makers."

"Most of the traps we encountered are likely made by them." He notes, eyeing the dismantled trap in one corner of the room, "They are masterfully made, if not outdated. I doubt any of them still practice the craft."

Orochimaru grins widely, "We'll just have to find out, won't we Sasori-kun?"

After, her presence in the mission is largely unfelt, her assistance was appreciated, but not required. One could believe that she had tagged along out of her own free will; Orochimaru didn't need her, and he certainly didn't need her. She was just there because she wanted to be, but she was not a thorn in their side, she was more like a spare tire to a wagon that had just been repaired.

When she first appeared before them, it is their first day into the mission, and a storm has just passed the mountainous region, making the treacherous terrain even more deadly. They had just booked a room at the inn, and when they opened the door, there she was-drinking tea and sitting as if she belonged there.

"Orochimaru-sama." She greeted dully without even a single glance towards them.

To him, that refusal of acknowledgment would have merited insubordination.

But Orochimaru, in all his eccentricities, merely chuckled at her. "Shikai-kun, what brings you here? I don't recall inviting you to this mission."

"I have business in the area." She replies plainly, "A daimyo had wanted to gather leftover traps."

His eyes narrowed— _For what?_

"How opportune!" Orochimaru exclaimed, taking full control of the situation. "We are here for the same thing, would you mind assisting us in this endeavor?"

There's the slightest shift in her expression, the subtlest hint of a grin.

"Not at all, Orochimaru-sama."

He doesn't question her unyielding loyalty to his partner, doesn't ask about her true purpose in the village, doesn't wonder if she had tailed them all the way from wherever she had come from, doesn't ponder the possibility of her deliberately coming up with excuses to be with them-with Orochimaru, to be specific. She was just there to begin with, ready to take orders and carelessly endanger her life for the sake of one man.

He believes that such loyalty is hard to come by in these times.

He is caught alone with her after he returns. Orochimaru has taken leave of him to pursue his research on medicinal plants found in the region-an obvious lie. He thinks it timely to strike a conversation with her to gauge if she is still hostile towards him, or if she had at least become indifferent.

He has time, after all.

She is drinking alone in her room when he arrives, and immediately she is unnerved at the sight of him-aloof and confident as if he belonged there. She had every right to refuse his entry, but thinks he would sooner skewer her alive before she could scream. So instead, she scowls-a usual reaction-at his entrance; his cool demeanor yet to burn at her fury.

"How did you come across the Fujikawa?" He begins the conversation.

She replies haughtily, "I have been in the region far longer than you."

A beat.

"So how?"

She grits her teeth. "By chance."

He blinks. "And they weren't hostile?"

She pours herself another cup before explaining to him, "The advantage of my position as a samurai is that I hold no allegiance to any of the shinobi villages."

He notes, "But to Orochimaru, you do."

She downs the contents of the cup in one swing before replying, "Not anymore."

A pause.

He didn't expect such an answer to be told as if it were basic knowledge. He didn't even expect that answer at all! So what could have happened? Had she simply left of her own accord? Had she been forced to leave? Was there someone better? Why were her ties severed in the first place?

But instead of asking those questions, he opted for a neutral one: "And this daimyo you speak of?"

To which she replies, "The details of my mission are confidential."

How professional.

He hides his distaste for the higher-ranking nobility under a blank expression. "And if this daimyo wishes to threaten the Akatsuki?"

She shrugs. "That's your problem, not mine." And grins. "I hold no ties to your organization."

He still wonders about the severance of her ties to his partner, so he muses aloud: "I wonder how he could grant you this much freedom to pursue those things."

And she simply replies with: "I am no longer in his employment, and he has become disinterested in my affairs."

He finds her listless responses disheartening as if she had lost all her heated determination and exchanged it for cold passivity. If it were, then she wouldn't have matured as well as he thought. She still acts like a child, cares like a child in so much as to feign apathy towards something that has lit a fire in her before. But he reckons that she still feels for the man, still yearns for his praise.

Which is why he says clearly, "He no longer cares for you is what you mean."

The way she stiffens her posture is a sign that she still is a child, but the way she looks him straight in the eye and her calm tone are signs of her maturity.

"It was a mutual agreement."

He holds her gaze and-ah, there's the fire he thinks she had put out.

So he nurtures that spark in her eyes with an offhand question, "And what of your quest for honor? Do you think you could now return to your home a proud soldier?"

Her gaze holds like steel and begins to burn like a match. "That is none of your concern."

She pours another cup and drinks quickly.

He smirks. "You have become stagnant. Complacent."

"You do not know of what you speak." was her simple reply.

Of course, he knows. All these years he had seen her collection grow, seen her body mold into the weapon of iron-like flesh and bone, seen the silver of her eyes burn with a fury directed at herself. It had been quite a pity to see her look so contented with being a scout when she could become so much more.

He knows that she only wishes to return to Yūkō no Sato a stronger woman worthy of her true name.

 _What is her true name, anyway?_

He has yet to ask.

"But we both know that I do." His patronizing remark is fuel to the fire of her anger. "And we both know that being a scout does not suit you."

She glowers at him. "Get out."

And at that moment, with her definitive answer, he concludes that anger is what fuels her, anger is what made her. She had begun as a temperamental child whose only goal was to become stronger, avenge the death of her parents-the usual. Now, she had honed that anger and had kept hidden away her desire for revenge in order to acquire the strength she had so wished as a child.

But he does not move, so he pours another cup and drinks as if it were alcohol.

His smirk grows wider because here she is, inevitably reverting back to her childish self; haughty and confident, but now with a sharpness to match. She had acquired the strength she needs to fulfill her goal, but what happens after? Where will she go to? Who will she follow? Would she go back? Would she leave?

But she is leaving, isn't she? She no longer has ties to Orochimaru, after all.

He murmurs just loud enough for her to hear, "You knew that as long as you were in his service, you would be unable to return."

His tone is not mocking nor condescending, and it surprises her. She turns sharply to him, eyes piercing and mouth agape. She had always known him to be audacious in his words, but she didn't think he would say such things with a softness bordering on sincerity. His eyes meet hers with a certain knowingness in them, as if he had seen through her.

She averts her gaze and grits her teeth, pours another cup of tea-but nothing comes out.

Porcelain hits porcelain and the sound echoes.

She grows angrier and more frustrated by the second, knows that he is waiting for a loud, uncouth reaction from her to put her on the spot. So she closes her eyes and breathes deeply and audibly in an attempt to calm herself. She mustn't give him another chance to rile her. She must prove to him that she is in control, that she is no longer a child.

So she tells him clearly, "You told me that I was strong enough."

And she held his haughty gaze the entire time.

If he is taken aback by her sudden cool demeanor, it doesn't show when he asserts, "I did."

"For the longest time I have doubted my strength," She begins, "I had wanted to become stronger in order to earn the glory that was kept from me, and it is thanks to you that I am finally able to."

He doesn't understand. Was she really just waiting for someone to acknowledge her strength in order for her to begin fulfilling a childhood dream? If so, why did it have to be him? Was it only just him?

She continues, "I have a long list of tasks to accomplish, and it is thanks to you that I have completed the first."

If becoming stronger was the first, and avenging her parents were second, then what is she aiming for? What does she want to become?

"What do you mean?" He asked.

He has no idea what she seeks out of life.

She smirks inwardly at his confusion before she stands. She fastens the two swords to her belt and straightens her kimono. She looks to him and appreciates his silence.

"Goodbye."

Her final word cuts through the silence before she pushes past him.

And he just lets her leave.

This couldn't be her goodbye. She couldn't be leaving, could she? If she were leaving, why would she even tell him? There are too many questions he'd like to ask her, and even more, he'd like to have her answer. It's frustrating, almost, how he feels that he had understood her when it might be that he doesn't understand her at all.

But if she were dead, then he wouldn't have to.

* * *

He meets Orochimaru three hours after her departure. The snake-like man looks at him knowingly, a sly grin plastered on his face as he eyes the disapproving look on his. Orochimaru meets the cold gaze of his partner seated on the tatami as if an angry parent ready to scold their disobedient child.

He states bluntly, "The samurai. She left."

He doesn't expect such an easy answer from Orochimaru in the form of a relieved: "So she finally has."

"How could you allow it?" He asked angrily.

How could Orochimaru take her departure so casually? It almost sounds as if he had been waiting for the day she would leave. But why? How could he allow such a careless action on his part? Doesn't he know that, even if she had only come into contact with them, she is a liability towards the Akatsuki? If she were to fall into the hands of one of the more powerful shinobi nations, she might…

"Why, Sasori-kun," His partner chuckles, "I didn't think you to have the heart to care about her."

He doesn't.

So he deadpans, "She is a liability."

But is met with a quick reply, "She is no longer obligated to do my bidding."

He narrows his eyes. "Why?"

Orochimaru states simply, "Because I no longer have any use for her."

The fact that Orochimaru's replies come swift and easy unnerve him, anger him even. How could he think to cast her aside like that? Orochimaru knew what he had wanted to do with her, knew that he wanted to turn her into a great weapon, if not one of the greatest, and yet…

His teeth grind together in his anger before he utters dangerously, "You knew I wanted to acquire her for my collection."

Orochimaru nods, a pleased smile on his face. "I did."

That does it.

"And yet you allowed her to leave?" He hissed.

His voice was a little too loud then. His posture a little too stiff. His eyes a little too manic. He is getting frustrated. He is getting angry. Orochimaru had always thought of riling him up as one of his favorite pastimes, quick to make fun of his child-like face contorting into a very furious, very adult expression.

The snake maintains his carefree expression as he replies; "I see nothing wrong with it."

"You did it on purpose just to rile me." He accuses him.

Orochimaru's grin transforms into a wide, confident smirk. "Why do you ask? Had she struck a nerve in you?"

How could he think to toy around with him in this manner? He had known all this time about his plans to strike a blade through her heart and pump her body full poison and embalming fluid, turn her bones into steel, and her skin into wood, maintain the fury in her eyes, and the sharp curve of her face. Orochimaru had known all this time, and yet how could he do this to him?

He vows to murder that snake one day.

But maybe after he murders her first.

"You knew all this time. I was this close–!"

His anger causes him to rush forward with a stiletto pointed to Orochimaru's chest. However, the man's smirk had not disappeared from his face, and it is almost accusatory as if he had seen through him and his actions.

Then he gets it.

He had never been one to rush forward so recklessly.

His eyes widen.

Such impulsiveness could have only come from the samurai.

 _No._

Had she… affected him in some way? Had she caused him to feel a certain frustration at her disappearance? Is he angry at her leaving? Is he even angrier with Orochimaru for allowing her to leave?

He retracts the blade and pulls himself away completely, turning away from the smirking man and boring his eyes deep into the horizon beyond the window.

Ah, another act that could have only come from her.

Orochimaru's laugh disrupts the silence. "Close to what? Killing her? Then you should have done so already. I didn't peg you to be one who hesitates."

Because he isn't.

He replies coldly, "I don't."

"You had all the time to end her life if you wanted." His partner states pragmatically.

His hands closed into tight fists because it is true. All of those times he had been caught alone with her, all of those times he had been able to get close to her, all of those times that he had been able to touch her, get through her armor and pinpoint her vulnerabilities… He could have struck a blade through her, and she would yield to him.

Not immediately, though, but she still would. She would put up a fight, drag her body to her most cherished swords and attempt to cut through him. And she would be bleeding as she would do so, from her stomach or from her chest. A trickle of blood spilling from her mouth. She would have been poisoned.

Then she would still herself, fall onto her knees and breathe heavily as she struggles to stand.

 _"Fuck you."_ She would say.

Then she would die.

He would have just stood there and watched her.

In the end, he thinks, she dies so easily just like the rest of them.

She is still human. She is still weak.

But she wouldn't be anymore.

"Orochimaru." He is quick to snap himself out of the fantasy as he turns to his partner, "You wouldn't take it against me if I did?"

Because killing her whilst she is in service of another would be akin to a threat.

However, Orochimaru's audible humming makes him think otherwise as the man replies, "I might have."

 _He might have?_

He scrutinizes him. "What are you trying to say?"

"She is a valuable asset. The finest of her kind, and yet you should know that she is better for you alive than dead."

How could she with all her talk of power and glory, her quest for recognition, and her childish impulsiveness? She would likely prattle on and one about those even in battle. Annoy him, and their opponent, to death.

So he asks, "Better for me? How so?"

Orochimaru's knowing gaze pierces him only slightly.

However, his words might have struck him deep in his heart if he still had one, "Misery loves company."

Was Orochimaru thinking that he actually values her presence in his life?

* * *

/

* * *

He is twenty-nine when he finds her.

Three months pass before he finds her in one of the smaller settlements of Takamura no Kuni. She has returned to her hometown, but for what reason? Takamura no Kuni is situated in close proximity to Kaze no Kuni and he might likely be in danger should anyone come to know his face. However, he is not here only because he is in pursuit of her, but because an Akatsuki spy had chosen the village of Yūkō no Sato as the rendezvous point.

He thinks for a moment that if she were the spy…

"Goodbye." Her supposed farewell echoes in the recesses of his mind.

Of course, she is not the spy.

He finds her outside of the inn just as when he is about to pass by the settlement. There is no doubt that it is she, dressed in samurai's hakama and carrying the two swords on her waist. He thinks she might be careless as to not wear a disguise, but at the same time, why would she need a disguise when she is most definitely not such an infamous figure in the world? Why would she need a disguise if she were part of the village's ranks?

If she were still part of Yūkō no Sato's samurai ranks.

He noticed that she wears the same hakama, cuts her hair the same length, though the scarf tied about her neck is new.

She is making this very easy, he thinks.

He manages to shadow her within the settlement, follow her to what he thinks might be the training ground outside of the settlement, and keep himself a good distance away.

That is, until she whips her head to look in his direction, face twisted into a disgusted scowl.

 _Ah, so he has been found out._

Her narrowed gaze rests on him before she sighs and turns away, shoulders stiff and hands curled into tight fists. He thinks she must be restraining herself.

Her gruff statement sounds past the wind, "Your presence here comes as no surprise."

Her stoic voice does not betray her feelings of surprise and discomfort. She had not left him any hint of her location, nor had she given him the challenge to find her. If anything, she had severed her connection to him with a simple, although she thinks is a definitive, farewell. How could he know she was here in the first place?

Of course. He is a spy. He is an international criminal. He likely wants her dead.

How could she have underestimated him?

"And yours is." He replies. "What are you doing here?"

She is quick to respond. "It's none of your business."

He steps forward into the clearing. "I thought to see how you are doing."

She readies a steady hand on Kunishige, the longer of the two blades, and replies smoothly, "I don't see why you should be so concerned about me."

Her actions ought to be a threat to him, but he is unfazed by it.

"You've become a mercenary." He commented lightly.

He was, after all, not so careless as to take her farewell at face value. He sent a number of his spies to track her down and reports her activities to him, but he isn't doing this for his own sake, but for the sake of Akatsuki. Surely, there must be at least one of two of the Akatsuki's enemies who have come to know her face or her name. His spies report her whereabouts; all the smaller and minor villages, she never ventures into the Five Great Shinobi Countries for too long, doesn't pass by the capitals of those countries, and instead by-passes the major villages altogether. It tires out his spies, wastes their time treading through treacherous terrain and camping out in utter silence darkness.

What she was doing must either be an utter waster of time, or a technique of self-preservation.

Was she a wanted criminal? Had she finally been included in the newest version of the Book? Had her own family scorned her? Or had she simply made enemies and thought that to be on the run is a better course of action?

He knew her to be a fighter, that she would sooner charge into battle than to tend to bleeding wounds.

So why the sudden course of action? What does she plan to achieve?

It frustrates him that he doesn't know what she's thinking.

She breaks the silence with a stern reply, "Again, it does not concern you."

He tries his hand at convincing her, "Surely your talents would be put to greater use elsewhere."

If she had become a mercenary, then her avoidance of the greater shinobi countries wouldn't make sense, as these countries put out bounties on a nearly daily basis, and these bounties were worth a lot more than those bounties put up by the smaller countries. On the other hand, could it be, perhaps, that she is making herself known at the grassroots level? Let her name be heard in the gossip among the villagers, then passed onto the traveling merchants, then to the civilians of the larger countries, and then to everyone else.

People would be talking about her even before her name reaches any of the Five Kage.

That's quite the tactic, if only it were true.

But for what other reason would she leave?

She bites a harsh response, "Don't talk like you know anything about me."

Oh, but he does know about her. In fact, he thinks he knows more about her than he lets on.

Her threatening tone is met with an assured response from him, "You returned to Takamura no Kuni to prove something, that much I can tell."

And she hates how he can be so sure of himself, how he could tear her biting words apart with his self-assured tone. She wants to hurt him now, to make him go away, cut through him with the intent of making him realize that she is no longer something to be toyed with, that she is no longer a child.

Nevertheless, he still sees her as one who is simple-minded, determined with a one-track mind. He still believes her to be one who has one ultimate, albeit lofty, goal in mind.

"You sought to become stronger, and here you are." He concluded.

There is no audible response from her, but he is sure that the crushing weight of the realization must have come down on her. Her eyes widen the slightest, her stance falters minutely, her breathing stops, and she turns to him with a look of betrayal, a look of helplessness.

 _"How could you?"_ He could almost imagine her saying in the most humiliated and defeated tone.

In the end, she hasn't changed. She had sought to become stronger, to become a living legend, a testament to the power and skill of the samurai, and yet she is here. She has returned to where she has started, and yet she cannot think herself to be stronger, because he is here, because he is belittling her. If she had truly wanted to become a living legend, then she ought to go through a perilous journey, or undertaken a dangerous mission, or sought the mythical blade she had boasted to him before.

Instead, she had returned to her village, in the hopes of…

What exactly does she hope for?

"What are you still doing here?" He asked.

She glares immediately. "I belong here."

How pitiful she must be to have nowhere else to go.

He approaches her and she stiffens visibly.

"No, you don't."

The way he says those three words infuriate her, but she doesn't let it show, refuses to let it seep through the armor she had carefully prided herself in.

"Orochimaru-sama had no further use for me." She replies. "It was mutual."

He frowns internally. He knows that it was, but the weight of the dismissal was heavier on her than his partner. She had devoted a number of her years in service of such a vile man, and yet her years of service had only been repaid in monetary value and in the sparring matches between her and some shinobi prisoner. There, in the underground arena of Orochimaru's lairs, she had grown victorious and rightfully feared, but in the above world, she is nothing but one of those mercenaries. She is nothing special in the world above.

In the underground, she might have been the eternal victor, the immortal winner, but if she had any desire to become stronger, she must venture out into the world.

 _Of course._

He has figured it out.

"And so you left."

She nodes minutely, careful not to spur his ego, and replies bitterly, "What choice did I have?"

His answer is automatic, "You should have come to me."

The rage boiling within her simmers when she meets the tired, yet expectant look on his face. It's as if he had spoken the words she had longed to hear.

How dare he think himself so special?

Immediately her rage comes pouring out of her in violent torrents. She is quick to appear before him, suddenly close, suddenly overwhelming, her aura deadly and dangerous. And she is even quicker to wring him by the neck with her bare hands.

"And be turned into one of your puppets?" She accuses darkly.

He could almost laugh at the scene playing before him.

She had deliberately stepped close to him, grabbed him with her own bare hands, foregoing her blade altogether. The anger surges from within her eyes; she glares at him maddeningly, storm-gray eyes bearing the fury of a hurricane. She is angry, so very angry.

He is right in believing that she had not matured at all.

"What you seek in life is the same as mine." He reasons with her, voice calm against the raging tide of her anger.

She lifts his body quickly off the ground as if he weighed nothing, and threw him away from her. She watches his body roll against the terrain.

She shouts, "I am nothing like you!"

She might be fast, and she might be strong, but he is better than her.

His body disappears in a cloud of smoke, and from the smoke emerges a bare puppet–the body she threw was a substitution.

His true self appears behind her, but doesn't move to attack or incapacitate her. She turns swiftly, and swings punches and kicks at him. Her fists meet hardened wood. Her kicks clamor against unyielding steel. She continues her assault on him, keeping close to prevent him from using his puppets against her.

But she doesn't notice the strings forming around her, trapping her in a web.

He steps back for the briefest of moments before her punch could connect, and flicks his wrist.

The strings around her constrict immediately, immobilizing her in front of him.

An angry scream is ripped from her throat. And another. And another.

She rages in front of him like a wild dog, screaming for blood, begging to be let go. Before him, she is helpless, and if he could only strike at her heart with a poisoned blade, then–

He thinks about killing her at that moment and hesitates.

He searches her angry eyes for any signs of helplessness, of pleading, of anything resembling her submission, but he can't find any.

Instead, he finds anger, he finds frustration, he finds defiance, and he finds pity.

 _Pity._

Does she pity him?

She stops screaming and looks him right in the eye.

"I will be nothing like you." She hisses.

He knows that she is lying.

"You wish to become a legend," He begins, and she eyes him suspiciously, "to have a name that is remembered for all time."

He wants the same thing, too.

"That is why you returned to your homeland, expecting praise and fanfare, but what are you now?"

His voice is calm, calculated, and yet they strike her as if hot knives against her bare skin.

"You seek glory where it cannot be found."

He might as well start cutting into her as he speaks.

"You seek power where it cannot be given to you."

She struggles against the binds around her.

"You seek fame where it cannot be yours."

She wants to will herself away from him.

"You seek a life that is worthy being remembered."

She screws her eyes shut.

"You seek a life that is like mine."

She shakes her head vigorously.

"You seek to become one like me, to be powerful and admired, rightfully praise and rightfully feared. You seek to become the best at what you do, in order to earn the praise you long for so much."

How dare he speak to her as if he understood her?

"You lie…" She mutters continuously.

He merely shakes his head.

She replies by shouting in his face, "You lie!"

It further infuriates her that he doesn't say a word to her.

"Your strength will never be acknowledged by them." He continued.

How could he sound so sure about that?

"Silence." She warns.

He steps forward until he is only an arm's distance away from her.

He whispers, "You are alone in this world, without anyone else to turn to."

She screams at his face, ready to tear his head from his shoulder with just her teeth.

"Shut the fuck up!" She commands.

He smirks at her heated expression, and skims his fingers over her cheek, watches as her fury twists into confusion and bewilderment, and then to a mess of tears and self-pity.

 _How quickly she can turn to a sniveling child._

He says as if to soothe her tears, "But here I am."

Her world stops altogether.

Stops because suddenly she is pulled away, released from the strings holding her in place, forced to her knees on the ground.

Stops because he is suddenly gone, all traces of him within the immediate vicinity.

Stops because today was the first time he touched her without a blatant intent to kill.

Stops because this might be the only time he looks at her with a sense of tenderness, of care, of pity.

Pity.

Her jaw quivers as she attempts to hold back tears.

 _How dare he._

Words refuse to fall from her mouth; her anger cannot be verbalized, her fury cannot be contained in syllables. She clenches her fists and trembles, hoping her frustration had been made apparent.

He merely continues to stare at her, be it in curiosity or in pity, she doesn't care.

She screams at him, loud and animalistic.

Yet, he continues to stare as if challenging her.

Where he thinks she will unsheathe her blades and strike at him with all her might and fury, she instead runs away–a mess of tears and confusion.

 _How childish._

He can't help but feel a little disappointed at that.

* * *

Three days pass. She is no longer within Takamura no Kuni, having left quickly after meeting him. She still feels the sting of her hurt pride, still remembers so vividly how it felt to be reduced to a crying mess at his felt. It was humiliating beyond anything she had experienced before, so she runs. She runs and she runs, faster and further away from him.

Then a week passes. She finds herself in the borders of Kaminari no Kuni, searching for an escaped prisoner from Kumogakure. Normally, she wouldn't take these sorts of missions, but she was desperate, she was paranoid. On her journey from Takamura to Kaminari, she hadn't slept peacefully at all, fearing that he might be looming over her, ready to strike a poisoned blade through her chest. She knows that Kumogakure boasts a strong military and that the Akatsuki have yet to establish a base in Kaminari, so she feels inclined to stay here a little longer.

Two weeks pass. She has remained in Kumogakure, staying at one of the inns and spending most of her time either honing her skills in the training grounds largely offered by the village. She is thankful for her position as a traveling samurai of Yūkō no Sato and feels safe knowing that the Akatsuki cannot possibly invade such a country. At times, there is the occasionally escaped prisoner or nighttime thief, but she is quick to handle it.

A month passes quickly. She has left Kumogakure and is now traveling towards Amegakure, where a particularly notorious escaped criminal has hidden, and where the Akatsuki's main base is. She thinks it was wrong to accept such an offer, but the bounty was too great, and the job seemed easy enough. The quicker she could assassinate the criminal, the sooner she could leave Amegakure.

Too bad. As it turns out, the Akatsuki were also hired to assassinate the criminal.

Worse, he was the one assigned to do so.

Thankfully, she had cut through the wanted man's ribs even before the Akatsuki could find him.

The wanted man was known as Kazegimi for his ability to freeze solid his victims and then steal their valuables. His touch reacted almost instantaneously, however, the ability was only limited to his hands, so she had managed to incapacitate him quickly by drawing her sword and avoiding his upper body on purpose. She stroked the back of his knees with the scabbard, and quickly drew the sword to pierce through his chest.

She honestly thought he was a better fighter than this.

A lone applause erupts from the doorway of Kazegimi's room.

She doesn't turn to look towards the source, knows already who it is.

She narrows her eyes and digs the sword deeper into Kazegimi's chest. "Why do you follow me?"

"You think you are so special, then?" His voice replied smoothly.

Oh, she must be. He had come to her, after all.

"I am." She echoes mockingly. "You followed me here, after all."

He doesn't reply to that.

"Don't think I am so oblivious to your spies." She hissed. "Why have me followed?"

"I was curious as to what you are doing." He admits.

"Why?"

He shrugs. "No important reason."

A beat.

She spits out, "You disgust me."

Another beat.

He blinks. "Why did you come here?"

"The Akatsuki was after him, right?" She retracts the blade from Kazegimi's chest. "Just let me take his ring finger, and the rest of him is yours."

"Alright. Deal." He replied.

She cuts Kazegimi's left ring finger without any pretense. She picks up the fallen appendage and eyes it carefully.

"Why did they send you?" She mutters.

He overhead this, and replied, "It was their decision."

She can't stand his presence in the room. It is almost suffocating.

So she hisses at him, "Leave me alone. You don't understand anything."

He smirks. He does understand her. "To you, strength is what matters most of all."

He has understood her ever since, which is why he says, "Without it, you are nothing."

This is the point where she rages.

"You think you know of my strength? You think your strength is the same as mine?" She mocks him, "You shinobi hide your weakness against shadow and illusion, and you are a prime example. You think trickery is a show of strength, but it is only of cowardice."

She pockets the finger in her robe and steps off Kazegimi's corpse.

"Then what do you suppose strength is?" His voice echoes in the silence.

"It is the unyielding force that wills one to survive." She replies easily as she turns Kazegimi's corpse with her feet so that he faces the ceiling.

She turns to him who has kept himself in the shadows and continues, "It is the fear of the death. It is the readiness to die for something more than oneself."

So she means to become a martyr?

"And I do not have it?" He prods.

"You shinobi find your strength in deception, whilst we samurai find strength in honesty." She explains.

He scoffs. What an outdated sentiment she believes in. If honesty were truly a sign of one's strength, then wars might as well be fought with words written on parchment and paper; an exchange of information in the bluntest possible manner. If honesty were the scale of strength, then not one person in the world would be ranked above the midpoint.

Everyone lies.

He smirks.

Kazegimi's supposed death at her hands was a lie.

He had poisoned the wanted man some days before, and his poisoned acted slowly, careful not to alert the victim of its progress towards complete paralysis.

How timely it was for her to come kill him when the poison had reached its full effect.

She pokes Kazegimi's chest with the tip of her sword and notices how quickly his body had stiffened.

Of course.

Poison.

She grits her teeth and eyes him dangerously.

"This must be funny to you." She comments. "How I would think I had killed him so easily when it all thanks to you."

He smiles wryly.

"Is that a thank-you?"

She grunts–an obvious sign of disagreement.

"Why?" She questions him.

"In fact, it is you whom I should thank." He steps out of the shadows. "You killed him for me, stabbed him where I would have."

She hates how he makes her feel like a means to an end.

"So I have what I came for," She points to Kazegimi's body, "And you have yours."

She is about to leave the room when he speaks.

"I didn't come here only for him."

She doesn't turn to look at him.

"You followed me." She stated.

He nods. "I have."

A beat. Silence. Her fingers twitch.

She takes in a deep breath before asking, "Why?"

She hears him step forward. "You should know the answer by now."

She does, and that is one of the reasons why she is afraid to face him. She fears he might thrust a thin, poisoned blade through her chest, jab a needle into her neck, or cut her stomach open. She fears he might already have a weapon ready to strike her from behind, surprise her the moment she turn to glare at him, just so he could see her face of fury and disgust morph into a truly terrified, pleading expression.

She won't give him that satisfaction, which is why she has her back turned to him even until this moment.

It is difficult to talk to someone like this. It's almost as if she is talking to a figment of her imagination, a disembodied voice that manifested from her psyche.

"I seek your company."

And with four simple words, he has forced her to look at him with a bewildered expression, all fear in her system replaced by confusion.

"What…" She mouths, "Why? How could you–"

She clamps a hand over her mouth and turns away from him again. Embarrassed. Humiliated. Silently she is cursing herself, telling herself to run away from him and hide in a place where he cannot find her, cannot reach her, cannot break her façade so easily like this.

"I am a man of my word." He continues.

He had promised her companionship in her quest for greatness, and she had been foolish to believe for even the slightest moment, so why are his words affecting her now?

She puts all the pieces together: his so-called promise, her self-imposed quest, his strengths, and her circumstances until it began to make sense.

He needs her.

Does he need her?

She straightens her posture, poises her back towards him to look tall and imposing. She breathes deeply and calms herself before she speaks.

"You will lie to me no longer if you wish for my company."

 _How quickly her demeanor changes!_

The plaintive look on his face twists into a smug expression, and he is thankful that she has her back turned to him. He is getting closer to his goal of acquiring her, and it is only a matter of time before she relents completely.

 _Everything is going according to plan._

So he tries pleading with her, though half-heartedly, "I have told you nothing but the truth–"

"You would kill me just to own me." She cut him off.

Ah, but now she has turned to face him, face darkened with an accusatory expression, the shining, but bloody, the tip of Kunishige pointed to him.

"You think such loyalty can only be bought with death!"

He takes a step forward and she takes a step back instinctively, the blade poised to defend against an oncoming attack, but her posture tells him she is paranoid, she is afraid.

 _Good._

He walks forward until the sharp edge of Kunishige is mere inches away from him.

She doesn't step back, nor does she move to cut him.

 _Why?_

He talks to her with a tone that mocks concern, "Then prove me wrong." He says as if daring her, "Prove to me that the loyalty I seek can be found in those alive."

"You seek slaves, not companions. And I will not be one."

She sounds so sure of herself.

 _How juvenile._

He smiles half-heartedly. "Remember that I promised you."

"Promises are weak for your kind." She spat out. "You'd sooner slay me than anything else."

It seems her tough exterior had been padded through and through–accompanying her wall of pride is an armor of skepticism.

He knows of only one way to get past her defense.

"Ask." He tells her.

Her expression softens in the slightest, and the crack in her armor appears before him.

He smirks internally, his own pride swelling within him.

"Ask for something, anything." He says in a whisper. "And I will give it to you."

Her steely expression falters, but she is quick to maintain her cold demeanor to scoff at him. "You think that earns my trust?" Her eyes narrow at him. "You could never give me what I want."

 _Never?_

She must be underestimating him greatly.

But what does she want, anyway?

He doesn't know what she wants.

At least, not yet.

He shakes his head. "You don't know that."

"I do." She argues. "You place yourself before everyone else."

There is a brief scowl that appears on his face, but he is quick to remove it.

"Ask." He says.

Her response is the silence that falls between them as she stares him down with storm-gray eyes, looking for answers swimming beneath his aloof exterior. It frustrates her how good he is at being stoic and emotionless. If only she could be the same.

Moments pass uncomfortably between them before she finally returns Kunishige to its scabbard. She doesn't move away from him, nor does her move toward her. She tries searching his face for one last time before she gives in and asks:

"What do you want from me?"

And he already knows that she is so close, so close…

"Leave with me."

He punctuates his statement with a consoling smile he had learned to perfect at a young age.

A look of shock washed over her face and she stumbles over her words before she could correctly ask, "Why?"

His answer comes quick, "You express loyalty that is absent from the shinobi. In the past few months, a number of my spies have betrayed me."

It is only because he had foreseen this situation weeks before, planned on how to win her over in a mental battle. It might be true that she could overpower him in a physical fight, but when it came to a battle of the mind, he would surely win over her.

And he is so close to declaring his victory.

She tries her best to return her steely façade when she asks, "Then what makes you think I won't?"

However, her tone comes sounding like a defiant child.

He replies with another rehearsed answer, "I am merely offering you a chance at a better life."

"A better life? And what do you suppose that is?" She laughs mirthlessly before accusing him coldly, "How could you when you do not even know me?"

Oh, her eyes could almost cut through him.

But he expected such a response from her, which is why he says, sounding as sincere and as tempting as he could:

"Then allow me to know you."

There is a moment when she flinches at his words, jaw becoming stiff, eyes growing wide, a childish flush coming over her cheeks, but it had been only for the quickest of moments, because soon after she returns to an expression of arrogant disbelief.

She laughs at him mockingly. "You ask for the impossible."

"Beyond your honor and beyond your strength, do you not seek to become something else?" He asks. "Something worth more than what you are now?"

He has no doubts of what her answer would be.

"And what would that be? Immortal just like you?" She mocks.

 _Perfect._

He fights a smirk threatening to come over his mouth, and instead says, "What I seek is a protector."

And he is sure that somewhere within her a spark had been set off and incited a feeling from her that she had kept dormant for the longest time.

What she wanted was to be needed, to be relied upon, to be trusted enough, and to become something more than the killer she is now.

What she seeks to become is a protector.

He knows her all too well.

She blinks slowly and he notices that she had swallowed a lump in her throat, that perhaps she is nervous, that it is likely that he has won her over.

She chooses her words carefully and speaks hesitantly, "And you would choose me?"

 _So close!_

"A shield cannot protect without a master. A sword loses its purpose without a wielder." He stated her very words to him some years ago.

At that moment, she could have cried.

But she refuses to.

She cannot.

 _She must not!_

He steps forward, close enough to pierce a needle in her neck or thrust a blade through her stomach, but he doesn't do either of those. And she, for all the fear she had been feeling moments before, doesn't move to run from him, nor move to cut him quickly with a sword.

They stand still for a moment, and he notices how bigger she is compared to him. His eyes are leveled with her mouth. If he stepped closer, he could press his teeth into her collarbone and seep poison into the wound.

But he doesn't do that.

Instead, he looks up at her and whispers:

"Even immortals need their protectors."

There is the slightest twinge in her chest, the softest pang in her heart, and the most minute throb of something from deep within her.

But her throat tightens.

Her mouth goes dry.

She doesn't know what else to say, so she echoes him:

"Even immortals need their protectors."

And she sounded as if she were in a state of dreaming.

He continues to look at her as he says; "There is no one else in the world that needs you."

Her mouth hangs open at the thought, and she seemingly comes to a standstill. Her fingers twitch at her side, and she breathes slowly through her mouth. Her eyes begin to water and he thinks she might cry.

A moment passes before she shuts her mouth and closes her eyes, breathes deeply before opening her eyes to look down at him.

He notices that it is as if her eyes had become clearer.

"Do you need me?" She asks.

He smiles.

"Yes."

 _Victory._

* * *

A/N: Thank you. Sorry. The next ones are going to be better, I promise.


	10. REVISION: The Killer and the Artist

**Martyrdom is an Art**

* * *

(Ugh, I hate it when authors do this, but it had to be done.)

Hello, dear readers!

As much as it pains me to (yet again) discontinue a story, I will no longer be updating this because what I had thought would be minor revisions (meaning not even 50% of the work will be changed) are actually MAJOR overhauling, canon-divergent revisions that would then render the current chapters as... I don't know, non-existent? It would seem unfair to you all that I'll be using this story as a placeholder(?) for a totally different story.

In short, I will be writing a totally different story with a totally different pace. Chapters will be longer and totally different from what I have already uploaded. Can you just imagine me writing Sasori AS A CHILD? Even I'm feeling nervous at that challenge.

I thank all of you for your support of this story, and I would gladly appreciate it if you would consider reading/following the revised story, _**The Killer and the Artist**_. The first chapter has been uploaded on this site, and on AO3 (where it has replaced this) as well if anyone is interested.

I had more or less a year to figure out what I wanted to do with this story, and I have the rest of the year to provide you with a substantial story.

If anyone's interested, I have a longer(wish) story up and ready for all your love, hate, and whatnot.

 _Love-in-idleness_ is a story that is already in the process of revision (albeit a VERY LONG ONE), but it's always open for your comments because I honestly have no idea what I'm going to do next.

Feedback is always appreciated.

 _\- creatoriginsane_


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